The Lost Peace

  Stalin now believed that a nuclear-armed United States, which previously seemed to lack the wherewithal to challenge Russia in Europe, where the Soviets would have superior land armies and the Americans would be eager to bring their troops home, could threaten the USSR with A-bombs delivered by air forces. In Stalin’s view, Washington’s acquisition of atom bombs changed the power balance in Europe and intensified his determination to match America’s newfound power by pressing the case for the Soviet nuclear program.

  In September, after Japan’s surrender, Stimson made the case to Truman for shared international control that would include the Soviets and aim to outlaw proliferation of atomic bombs. He argued that the United States and Britain would not be able to maintain a monopoly on the weapon and that any attempt to do so would provoke an arms race with Moscow that would eventually threaten nuclear war. Stimson believed that a prompt, direct approach to the Soviets about the bomb would provide the best opportunity “to proscribe atomic weapons and to encourage scientific collaboration” for peaceful uses.

  But memories of Germany’s appeasement, Japanese perfidy, and postwar Soviet aggressiveness in Eastern Europe persuaded Truman that Russia was not to be trusted and that a likely arms race would allow the United States, with its superiority in resources and know-how, to maintain its advantage over any competitor. The key to peace was not in idealistic cooperation but in unsentimental assertiveness of American strength. At the beginning of October, when Truman made it clear that he would not share America’s bomb-building capacity with other nations, newspapers around the country endorsed his announcement as a wise defense of the nation’s future security. When a friend privately asked the president if the “armaments race is on,” he said yes, and predicted that “we would stay ahead.” He described “America’s control of atomic power as a ‘sacred trust.’”

  Truman’s statement is understandable in the context of 1945: having defeated the most terrible regimes in history, the president and the great majority of Americans saw themselves as trustees of the good, of a set of civilized values that any rational person would prefer to the ruthless convictions that had driven America’s enemies. But the assumption that the United States would always represent the best in human behavior was less than convincing. As George Kennan would point out thirty years later, exaggerated fears might drive even the most well intentioned leaders into the use of nuclear weapons that would produce “utter disaster for all of us,” as was the case during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when Moscow and Washington came close to an unwanted nuclear conflict.

  Kennan came to believe that “the nuclear bomb is the most useless weapon ever invented. It can be employed to no rational purpose.” He acknowledged the appeal of “deterrence,” the belief that the bomb was a guard against its use by others against us and the fact that there had been no war between great powers since 1945. But Truman’s idea that America’s continued possession and control of these weapons of mass destruction would likely make the world safer from war was an illusion. The possession of these armaments by one nation was bound to lead to an arms race, as Truman acknowledged already had begun in 1945. And once begun, it took on a life of its own, as arms races always have throughout history.

  Because humans, Kennan said, “are always going to be part animal, governed by their emotions and subconscious drives rather than by reason,” it was essential “to see that the weapons they have are not too terrible…. This is why I feel that the great weapons of mass destruction … should never be in human hands.” No one, no one, he emphasized, was to be trusted with them, especially because their availability could trigger their use not because of a conscious decision to start a war but as a weapon to preempt an anticipated attack—whether real or imagined.

  Truman understood that one nation’s possession of the bomb would provoke others to develop it. So he simultaneously approved a long-term plan to work toward international control of atomic power through a United Nations–designated agency. But it was already too late to head off the arms race. Molotov announced in a Kremlin speech in November 1945 that the Soviet Union had every expectation of developing atomic power “soon,” and criticized the United States for thinking it could sustain a monopoly. It is unlikely that the Soviets would have genuinely cooperated on any U.S. proposal that held back Moscow’s reach for nuclear weapons. While U.S. officials at least gave consideration to proposals that might avert an arms race, Moscow refused to believe that it could be the equal of the United States if it agreed to any sort of international control over atomic power. Advocates of cooperation now feared that the world was headed for a nuclear holocaust.

  Because such a prospect shadowed both Moscow and Washington, U.S. and Soviet leaders continued to hope that they could find grounds for agreement that would assure each of them a secure future. But it was a forlorn hope. Four months after the war in Europe and less than a month after fighting ended in the Pacific, suspicions that each was determined to do in the other’s social system—communism versus capitalism—dominated Soviet and American thinking rather than faith in appeals to accommodation.

  At a meeting in London in September, the Council of Foreign Ministers, a tripartite forum set up at Potsdam to negotiate postwar peace treaties for Germany, Italy, Eastern European countries, and Japan, quickly reached an impasse. Secretary Byrnes expressed amazement that Molotov doubted America’s good intentions toward other nations, while Molotov could not understand why Byrnes saw the Soviet Union as aiming not at national security in its dealings with its East European neighbors, but world conquest.

  Both sides made their distrust of one another apparent. “I do not understand your Secretary of State,” a Russian official said to a member of the U.S. delegation. “We have been told that he is a practical man, but he acts like a professor,” who lectures us without regard for our point of view. “When is he going to start trading?” Molotov made his irritation clear to Byrnes: at a reception, he asked Byrnes if he had an atomic bomb in his pocket. Byrnes, who had preceded his trip to London with private comments about carrying a bomb with him to the conference to intimidate the Russians, replied, half jokingly, that indeed he did and would threaten Molotov with it if he didn’t come to an understanding with him. At a banquet, Molotov defiantly toasted Byrnes by declaring, “Of course, we all have to pay great attention to what Mr. Byrnes says, because the United States are the only people who are making atomic bombs.”

  Byrnes was not unmindful of the need to bend: worried that an open break with the Russians would remind Americans of the failed peace plans after World War I and spark renewed isolationism, he told John Foster Dulles, an international lawyer who had been Governor Thomas Dewey’s principal foreign policy adviser in his 1944 presidential campaign and was the Republican Party’s token member of the delegation in London, “I think we pushed these babies about as far as they will go and I think that we better start thinking about a compromise.” But Dulles would not hear of it, and threatened to tell the press that Byrnes was appeasing the Russians. Nothing in 1945, or for years after, could be worse for a foreign policy official than to be described as an “appeaser.” The same went for Soviet officials. Neither side, then, felt free to give ground, and so the conference ended in an unproductive deadlock. The Soviets saw no point in issuing a closing communiqué that falsely described meaningful steps toward agreement on any major issue.

  Soviet-American tensions extended to postwar arrangements in Asia. After Tokyo surrendered, Molotov told Harriman that the Soviet entrance into the Pacific War on August 8 entitled it to share in Japan’s postwar governance. Specifically, Molotov asked that two Soviet generals be included at the surrender ceremony on the Missouri, with veto rights over Japan’s terms of capitulation. Harriman indignantly refused, and Truman followed up by rejecting Stalin’s request that Soviet troops be allowed to occupy northern Hokkaido. He agreed to fulfill the Yalta commitment to Soviet control of the Kuril Islands, but made it clear that the administration of postwar
Japan was entirely an American affair, with MacArthur as the governing authority.

  The decision to have an exclusive U.S. occupation rested on not only the conviction that American forces had almost single-handedly defeated Japan but also the desire to demonstrate that, unlike after 1918, it was possible to re-create a totalitarian enemy in America’s image. This was clearly out of reach for all Germany, where the country was divided into American, British, French, and Soviet zones and was already a subject of contention between East and West. With Japan under exclusive U.S. administration, however, Washington could hope to fulfill the cherished Wilsonian dream of refashioning a totalitarian, militaristic society by imposing a “democratic revolution from above” or “reform from on high” in Japan. True, an Allied Control Council for Japan would be established, but Washington and MacArthur never allowed it any substantive power over occupation policy.

  Initially, American commanders entering Japan feared that they might have to deal with enduring resistance punctuated by suicide attacks. Bands of roving youths refusing to acknowledge defeat posed a challenge to the Japanese, who were eager to comply with the emperor’s command, and U.S. troops landing at a Tokyo airfield. They anticipated violent opposition that could result in additional deaths and American acts of repression.

  But in fact the Japanese response to their defeat was surprisingly cooperative. “They acted as if we were partners in a common cause. Japs saluted us. We saluted them,” an American correspondent reported. Indeed, most Japanese seemed almost “euphoric” that the war was over and that they could try to transform themselves into a more peaceful and prosperous nation.

  As he understood and indeed relished, MacArthur, as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), was at the center of Japan’s planned transformation. Ironically, the occupation imposed changes on the Japanese not by popular demand but by fiat. The democratic institutions were mandated by MacArthur, an American proconsul, and his legion of well-intentioned imperialists, rather than chosen by voters at the polls. Some Japanese feared that the anticipated “revolution” would prove to be no revolution at all but an acceptance by passive Japanese of the dictates of a new emperor or colonial master.

  MacArthur was exceptionally shrewd and effective in playing the proconsul. He understood the Japanese affinity for a benign new emperor. On his arrival in Tokyo, when over thirty thousand Japanese troops with fixed bayonets lined his fifteen-mile route from an airfield to his downtown hotel residence, MacArthur’s aides feared an attack that could launch the occupation on a violent note. But MacArthur, who had insisted that his staff not be armed as a demonstration of their confidence in Japan’s acceptance of its defeat, viewed the Japanese troops standing at attention with their backs turned to the road as “a sign of submission and respect.” In his first orders to American occupation forces and Japanese authorities, he counseled “generosity and compassion” by expressing concern to alleviate a widespread food shortage.

  MacArthur’s famous grandiosity was a perfect fit for the start of the occupation. He declared himself intent on carrying “to the land of our vanquished foe the solace and hope and faith of Christian morals.” The pompous rhetoric reminded some Americans of the general’s imperiousness, and they worried that he was simply not the right man for the job of transforming Japan into a democratic society. But it was his assertion of control, indeed his insistence on obedience, that greatly appealed to a people used to submissiveness, making MacArthur such a good fit for his assignment. His “Jovian image of decisiveness and absolute authority,” his” ‘imperious aloofness and lordly graciousness,’” one Japanese commentator said, “established the prestige of the occupation.”

  While never allowing the Japanese to forget that they were defeated and beholden to American generosity in both day-to-day and long-term arrangements, MacArthur ensured that the occupation be not a draconian demonstration of wrath and vengeance imposed on a hated enemy but a respectful expression of regard for an honorable adversary. The disarming of Japanese troops, for example, was not to be done by U.S. forces but by their own commanders, as a way to insulate them from humiliation that could make them more difficult to deal with in the future. As a member of MacArthur’s staff said, “We must restore security, dignity, and self-respect to … a warrior nation which has suffered an annihilating defeat.”

  MacArthur’s points of reference in governing Japan “were Washington, Lincoln, and Jesus Christ,” one critic said. Yet however much his administration was the product of his biases, it was an effective prescription for demilitarizing and democratizing Japan. Truman and the State, War, and Navy departments were not uniformly happy with the degree of authority that MacArthur had assumed, but the need for a controlling power that could fulfill the dream of uplifting a fallen enemy and transforming it into an extension of the United States—the forty-ninth American state, as one Japanese later proposed—was too compelling to dispute.

  The occupation of Japan was one of those unpredictable developments that surprised even the most prescient experts about what to expect at war’s end. That so violent a conflict, in which both sides had descended into acts of such horrendous destruction, should have evolved into a relatively benign occupation with genuine displays of regard for each other’s humanity is a reassuring testament to human decency. The Japanese and Americans who had showed themselves ready to inflict every sort of cruelty on each other suddenly collaborated in the arduous task of reconstructing a broken society. None of this is to suggest that Japan was restored to a decent living standard overnight. Hunger and misery would plague the Japanese for months after the fighting ended. But from the first, the watchword was not enduring mutual hatred and revenge, but finding ways to rebuild and reconcile differences.

  The Japanese, so thoroughly defeated in the war, were receptive to a fresh start, even if a foreign conqueror dictated it. The fact that America had won the war was a compelling reason for the Japanese to embrace the victor’s values. At the same time, MacArthur’s position of control encouraged him to be generous in applying U.S. standards to a conquered society. He wisely saw that a draconian occupation was less likely to bring needed change to Japan than one marked by a spirit of reconciliation.

  As the war ended, the need for a successful occupation of Japan—that is, one promising a peaceful transition and a shift to American political and social values—took on heightened importance when set alongside developments in Europe and the rest of Asia. The establishment of the United Nations under U.S. leadership generated hope that the post-1945 era would not be like the twenty years after World War I. But political differences with Moscow over postwar Europe, as well as developments in Korea, Indochina, and China as Japan collapsed, raised doubts about peace anywhere in the world.

  In the summer of 1945, only 15 percent of Americans were confident that the United Nations would be able to prevent future wars. Only half the country trusted Russia to cooperate with the United States in the future, and 60 percent of Americans opposed loaning either Britain or Russia billions of dollars for postwar reconstruction. The negative feelings about the wartime allies raised fears of renewed isolationism among Americans familiar with the disillusionment after 1919 that had made the country so reluctant to play a major role in overseas affairs.

  Korea was a minor concern or a nonissue for the great majority of Americans. But those who attended to events there could not have much hope that it would be a model of political tranquillity in northeast Asia. Initially Koreans, who had suffered under Japanese control since early in the century, were happy that Japan’s defeat would liberate them from colonial rule. But no one in the United States or among the troops who were rushed to Korea from Okinawa to occupy the southern part of the country knew how to manage the transition to self-rule. Lieutenant General John Hodge, who led U.S. forces into Korea, was so worried that Soviet occupation north of the thirty-eighth parallel and Communists in the south would turn all of Korea into a Soviet satellite that he initially relied on Ko
rean collaborators with the Japanese to administer the U.S. sector. This enraged Korean nationalists, who hated their Japanese oppressors and were furious at Hodge’s insensitivity to their feelings.

  Hodge, who knew next to nothing about Korea, operated on a day-to-day understanding of what needed to be done. End-of-the-war chaos, including economic disarray and political turmoil threatening a Communist takeover, dictated Hodge’s actions. He feared an extension of Soviet power comparable to Moscow’s control of Eastern Europe. As Hodge’s political adviser put it, South Korea was “a powder keg ready to explode at the application of a spark.”

  It was all enough to make Americans doubt the wisdom of continuing U.S. involvement in such remote parts of the globe, where ideological and local antagonisms unresponsive to outside pressures, even from a country with atomic bombs, trumped America’s grandiose hopes of representative government and peaceful social interactions under a rule of law.

  Indochina—Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam—was another secondary or obscure issue to most Americans; here again, though, no one could take hope that the world was entering a postcolonial era with reduced tensions that eased great-power competition and dangers of civil wars.

  Roosevelt had viewed French Indochina as a prime example of exploitive European colonialism, and an area where a joint Sino-American trusteeship would prepare Cambodians, Laotians, and Vietnamese for independence. By the beginning of 1945, however, reluctant to use U.S. troops to liberate the area from the Japanese, he was willing to let France assume the burden if it promised to establish a trusteeship that led to independence for the native peoples. He believed it would be “dangerous” to world peace to alienate 1.1 billion Asians by trying to reestablish colonial rule.