by Dick Cheney
Marshall decided to use a speech during Harvard’s commencement exercises to explain the necessity for America to act. He began by describing the devastation facing Europe and the damage that could be done, as a result, to America’s economy. “It is logical,” he said, “that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.” Our assistance would be open to all in Europe who needed it, including the Soviet Union and its allied states. “Our policy,” Marshall said, “is not directed against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.” The program he was proposing would, he said, “require a willingness on the part of our people to face up to the vast responsibility which history has clearly placed upon our country.” Wanting to reaffirm how high the stakes were and how important it was for America to act, Marshall had added handwritten notes to the end of his prepared remarks. He read them now, saying that he realized America was “remote from the scene of these troubles” and it was difficult perhaps to grasp the full scale of the suffering. And yet, he said, “The whole world of the future hangs on a proper judgment. It hangs, I think, to a large extent on the realization of the American people . . . of just what can best be done and what must be done.”
Marshall received a resounding ovation when he finished his twelve-minute speech, but the cheers were more likely for him than what he said. A modest man, not given to oratory, he had delivered the speech in such a matter-of-fact way that not even James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard, understood its significance. But the world would soon understand. Between 1948 and 1951, the United States would provide more than $13 billion to sixteen European countries, nearly $130 billion in 2015 dollars.
A key element of Marshall’s plan was that American assistance would be provided in response to needs identified by the Europeans. British foreign minister Ernest Bevin and French foreign minister Georges Bidault reacted quickly, arranging a meeting with Soviet foreign minister Molotov in Paris shortly after Marshall’s speech to outline assistance needs. The three-way talks did not last long. Molotov announced on July 2, 1947, that the Soviets were withdrawing.
On July 3, the French and British invited twenty-two other European nations to attend a planning conference in Paris. The ministers of the government of Czechoslovakia were planning to participate—until Stalin summoned the Czech prime minister and foreign minister to Moscow and ordered them not to attend. The Czech foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, said, “I went to Moscow as a minister of a free state and I am returning as Stalin’s slave.”
Cabinet ministers in Soviet Bloc countries were not the only ones Stalin was enslaving. Drawing upon newly released documents in the Soviet and East European archives, historian Anne Applebaum has methodically detailed the Soviet strategy to quash dissent, eliminate opposition, and establish totalitarian rule across Eastern Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Totalitarian rule meant, as one of Mussolini’s opponents first described it, “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
In every nation occupied by the Red Army at the end of the war, the Soviets carried out a four-part program to impose their rule. They created local secret police forces modeled after Stalin’s NKVD. They took over the radio stations. They carried out policies of ethnic cleansing. And they banned or took over the youth groups. Young people were a special target. “Even before they banned independent political parties for adults, and even before they outlawed church organizations and independent trade unions,” Applebaum writes, “they put young people’s organizations under the strictest possible observation and restraint.” The slogan of the German Young Pioneers explains the philosophy of their Soviet masters: “Those who own the youth own the future.”
To these methods of suppression and persecution, the Soviets added a military blockade of West Berlin in June 1948. In the aftermath of World War II, the Allies had divided Germany into four occupation zones, overseen by the Americans, the British, the French, and the Soviet Union. Berlin was inside Soviet-occupied East Germany, but the city itself was also divided into four sectors. All overland routes into Berlin went through East Germany.
In the spring of 1948, the Soviets began imposing restrictions on travel into West Berlin. Initially they denied entry to trains loaded with coal. The restrictions grew more severe and on June 24 the Soviets imposed a full blockade. Their objective was to drive the Allies out of Berlin, in contravention of the agreement reached after World War II.
Determined not to abandon the people of West Berlin, the United States and Britain, with some assistance from France, began to airlift food, coal, and other needed items into the blockaded city. Over the next eleven months, the Allies flew 278,228 flights into West Berlin, delivering 2,326,406 tons of food, coal, and other supplies. The Berlin Airlift went on until May 1949, when Stalin, realizing he could not bring the city to her knees, lifted the blockade.
In these post–World War II years the United States undertook an effort never before seen in history—to restore economic vitality and political freedom across Europe, including to her former enemy Germany. A similar program to establish democracy and free markets was under way in Japan. The economic and political freedom enjoyed today by peoples of Germany and Japan is a testament to the success of these efforts. In the words of historian Andrew Roberts, “To have helped raise their former deadliest foes to such a place is a tribute to the magnanimity of the English-speaking peoples in not going down the path of mass-despoliation that Stalin envisioned for both countries, and which he carried out against much of the industrialized plant of East Germany.”
Economic support for the rebuilding of Europe was crucial, but it was increasingly clear that the nations of Western Europe also required support to resist Soviet expansionism. “Something needed to be done,” according to President Truman, “to counteract the fear of the peoples of Europe that their countries would be overrun by the Soviet Army before effective help could arrive. Only an inclusive security system could dispel these fears.”
As discussions were under way to design this new security alliance, the British outlined some of the risks involved. The biggest risk they identified was one that is still raised in nearly all discussions of European security arrangements and Russia today. President Truman explained:
The principal risk involved, Bevin said, was that the Russians might be so provoked by the formation of a defense organization that they would resort to rash measures and plunge the world into war. . . . On the other hand, if a collective security system could be built up effectively, it was more than likely that the Russians might restudy the situation and become more cooperative.
Recognizing that leaving individual European nations to defend themselves would be the ultimate provocation, the United States and eleven other nations agreed to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington on April 4, 1949, and ratified by the Senate on July 21. It would become the most successful military alliance in history.
For forty years, from the signing of the NATO treaty in 1949 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the alliance was crucial in deterring Soviet aggression and keeping the peace. Without NATO and the commitment of the United States to maintain large numbers of forces in Germany and elsewhere on the continent, there can be no doubt that the Soviets would have moved to expand the territory under their control. The security guarantee provided by NATO was crucial to Western Europe’s ability to rebuild thriving economies, free from the constant threat of Soviet adventurism.
The twelve original NATO member nations were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United States. In 1952, Greece and Turkey joined, and in 1955, West Germany became a member. In 1966, the French, who were seeking improved relations with the Soviets and had doubts about America’s willingness to make good on
its extended deterrence commitments to Europe, announced they were pulling out of NATO’s military structure and requested the removal of NATO bases from French territory. When told of French president Charles de Gaulle’s decision, President Lyndon Johnson famously instructed Secretary of State Dean Rusk to ask De Gaulle, “Does your order include the bodies of American soldiers in France’s cemeteries?”
Spain joined NATO in 1980, and, as the Cold War came to an end, NATO began to offer membership to former Warsaw Pact nations. Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic joined in 1999, and Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined in 2004.
The heart of NATO’s defense pact is found in Article 5, which embodies the concept of collective self-defense. It holds that “an armed attack on one or more [members] shall be considered an armed attack on all.” Less than twenty-four hours after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Article 5 was invoked for the first time in the fifty-year history of the alliance.
AT 4:00 P.M. ON May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion stepped out of a car at No. 16 Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv. The white-haired Ben-Gurion entered the city’s art museum, where at 5:00 P.M. he declared the establishment of the state of Israel. Eleven minutes later, the United States recognized the new country. President Truman had been committed to the cause of the creation of a Jewish state. He recognized Israel despite the fact that, as he described it, “[t]he Department of State’s specialists on the Near East were, almost without exception, unfriendly to the idea of a Jewish state.”
On May 15, British forces, stationed in Palestine for the previous thirty years, pulled out. Five Arab armies invaded the newly created state. Born in war, Israel has survived and thrived in one of the world’s most dangerous regions to become one of America’s strongest and most important allies—until the Obama administration.
ON JANUARY 12, 1950, at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Secretary of State Dean Acheson explained American policy in Asia. He described an American “defensive perimeter” that, most unfortunately, did not include South Korea. North Korea’s leader, Kim Il Sung, had been seeking Stalin’s approval to send his forces across the 38th parallel and invade the South. Following Acheson’s speech, he got it. Stalin also prodded Ho Chi Minh to be more aggressive in Indochina.
President Harry Truman was in the library of his home in Independence, Missouri, when Acheson called him on Saturday, June 24, 1950. “Mr. President,” he said, “I have very serious news. The North Koreans have invaded South Korea.” By the next morning, the UN Security Council had been called into emergency session and President Truman was headed back to Washington. While he was airborne, the UN unanimously passed a resolution declaring that the North Korean action was “a breach of the peace” and demanding that the North withdraw its forces immediately. Fortuitously, the Soviet delegate was not in attendance, having begun a boycott previously over the UN’s refusal to seat a delegate from Communist China.
Truman called his secretaries of defense and state, along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the three service secretaries, together for a dinner meeting. The interior of the White House was being gutted and rebuilt, so they dined at Blair House, where Truman lived for much of his presidency. Dean Acheson read reports from the U.S. ambassador in South Korea to the assembled group. Then Acheson laid out his recommendations, which included sending the Seventh Fleet into the Formosa Strait to prevent the conflict spreading, and providing ammunition and supplies to the South Korean army.
Each of the attendees at the meeting was asked for his views on Acheson’s recommendations. Truman wrote later that there was “complete almost unspoken acceptance on the part of everyone that whatever had to be done to meet this aggression had to be done. There was no suggestion from anyone that either the United States or the United Nations could back away from it.” Truman also firmly believed that North Korean aggression had to be countered without expanding the war to worldwide dimensions. This concern was shared by America’s European allies, who feared that a broader land war in Asia could make it difficult for America to keep its commitments to NATO, thereby leaving Western Europe vulnerable to Soviet coercion or attack.
Truman named five-star general Douglas MacArthur to command the international force called for by the United Nations. The effort to resist the North Korean invasion started badly. The Korean People’s Army, well supplied by the Soviets, forced the American-led coalition back to Pusan, on the southern tip of the Korean peninsula. The war might well have been lost had it not been for MacArthur’s daring landing at Inchon. Seventy thousand troops from the Army’s X Corps, led by the 1st Marine Division, conducted the surprise amphibious assault and took Seoul on September 26, 1950. The American-led coalition crossed the 38th parallel into North Korea and took the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, on October 20.
The war seemed won as American forces ate Thanksgiving dinner on November 25, but the next day the Chinese entered the war, sending 300,000 troops crashing across the Yalu River into North Korea. General MacArthur sought approval to cross the Yalu, and urged attacks on Chinese cities. He clearly did not share Truman’s view that the war must be won without expanding it. In April 1951, Truman relieved him of command.
The Chinese army fighting the Americans on the Korean peninsula was officially known as the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army. It was under the supreme command of Chairman Mao Zedong, who had defeated the Chinese nationalists and declared a new, communist China on October 1, 1949. Mao came to power promising to create a prosperous, egalitarian society. Instead, according to The Black Book of Communism, Mao’s policies resulted in the death of 65 million Chinese, through political persecution, mass imprisonment, and starvation.
The war in Korea raged on until July 1953, when an armistice was declared, leaving both sides once again facing each other across the 38th parallel. The United States had prevented a communist takeover of South Korea, but at a tremendous cost: 36,564 Americans died in combat.
THE SUCCESSFUL TESTING OF the first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site in New Mexico in 1945 had made the United States the world’s only nuclear power. As President Ronald Reagan once noted, we did not use this monopoly to expand our territory or threaten other nations. “Historians looking back at our time,” he said, “will note the consistent restraint and peaceful intentions of the West.” How different the world would have been, he said, if the nuclear monopoly had been in the hands of the Soviets. America’s nuclear monopoly ended on August 29, 1949, when the Soviets detonated an atomic bomb at a remote site in Kazakhstan.
A few months later, in November 1949, President Truman established a special committee of the National Security Council to advise him on whether the United States should move forward with development of an even more devastating technology—a hydrogen or thermonuclear bomb. Paul Nitze, a State Department representative who participated in the committee discussions, later described the factors they had to consider. According to physicist Edward Teller, Nitze wrote, “Such a weapon [was] technically feasible,” and according to Ernest Lawrence, director of the University of California’s Radiation Laboratory, “The Soviets possessed capacity similar to ours.” Thus, the only conclusion to be reached, wrote Nitze, was “that the Russians were already working on an H-bomb.”
The committee met with the president on January 31, 1950, to present its recommendation that research and development go forward. When Truman had finished reading the committee’s report, Secretary of State Dean Acheson turned to Atomic Energy Commission chairman David Lilienthal, who had agreed that the research go forward but had concerns he wanted to address directly to the president.
Truman cut the presentation short. “Can the Russians do it?” he asked. Assured they could, he signed off on the group’s recommendation. The meeting lasted less than ten minutes. It was the right decision. We now know the Soviets were well along in their efforts. They tested their own thermonuclear weapon within nine months of America’s first hydrogen bomb test.
The new world created by the first Soviet atomic test and the possibility of these new “super” weapons meant that the United States faced an entirely new strategic circumstance. Truman instructed the secretaries of state and defense to produce a new national security strategy crafted for the growing threats. That strategy was laid out in NSC-68, one of the most important documents of the Cold War era.
NSC-68 put the lie to the idea, more treasured in the decades since than it was at the time, that there was any moral equivalence between the Soviet Union and the United States:
The fundamental purpose of the United States is laid down in the Preamble to the Constitution: “. . . to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” In essence, the fundamental purpose is to assure the integrity and vitality of our free society, which is founded upon the dignity and worth of the individual.
By contrast:
The fundamental design of those who control the Soviet Union and the international communist movement is to retain and solidify their absolute power, first in the Soviet Union and second in the areas now under their control. In the minds of the Soviet leaders, however, achievement of this design requires the dynamic extension of their authority and the ultimate elimination of any effective opposition to their authority.
