The Lost Peace

  189 As the war ended: Kennan, Memoirs, 532–46.

  190 Kennan worried: Ibid., 292–95; 547–59.

  192 The hysterical anticommunism: Ibid., 407–14, 462–63.

  193 Domestic dislocations: Gallup Poll, 1935–1948, 557, 587; Dallek, Truman, 31–34.

  193 Like the president: Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), chaps. 1 and 4.

  194 By 1981: Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: The President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 34–35, 51–52, 184, 205–06.

  194 The Cuban missile crisis: For these crises in the 1960s and 1973, see Dallek, An Unfinished Life, 545–74, JFK quote on 555; Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 131–35, 168–76, and 444; Robert Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 136–37, 530–31.

  196 Because the danger: Boyer, Bomb’s Early Light, 50; Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945, 470–72.

  197 The agreement signaled: Boyer, Bomb’s Early Light, 29–32.

  197 The novelist Norman Mailer: New Yorker, October 6, 2008, 51–52.

  197 At the end of 1945, concerned scholars: Ibid., 51–53; Offner, Another Such Victory, 145–46; Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 339–40.

  198 Despite the committee’s determination: Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 341–42; Robert L. Beisner, Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 33–34.

  200 The report could not disarm: On Stalin’s distrust, see Nicholas Thompson, The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War (New York: Henry Holt, 2009), 44–45; Winston S. Churchill, Iron Curtain speech, March 5, 1946, reproduced as “Sinews of Peace,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikisource. org/wiki/Sinews_of_Peace; Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 114–16.

  201 Baruch’s appointment: Offner, Another Such Victory, 144–52.

  202 It is sobering: Montefiore, Stalin, 536.

  203 Churchill, like Stalin: Donovan, Conflict and Crisis, 190–91; McCullough, Truman, 486–88.

  204 It certainly commanded: Churchill, Iron Curtain speech.

  206 The reaction in the United States: Gallup Poll, 1935–1948, 562, 567; John L. Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), 308–09; Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill: Never Despair, 1945–1965 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988), 203–06.

  207 However eloquent: McCullough, Truman, 489–90.

  207 In Moscow: Donovan, Conflict and Crisis, 192; Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 136–37.

  Chapter 7: Cold War Illusions—and Realities

  211 On his return from the United States: The Churchill quotes are in Gilbert, Never Despair, 233, 238–39, 258. On Stephenson, see William Stevenson, A Man Called Intrepid (New York: Lyons Press, 2000). On Soviet thinking, see Adam B. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence: The History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917–1967 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968), 414–20.

  214 In Stalin’s judgment: “Moscow Hints Lag in Main Granaries,” New York Times, November 25, 1946, p. 13. Also see David Christian, Imperial and Soviet Russia: Power, Privilege and the Challenge of Modernity (London: Macmillan, 1997); N. M. Dronin and E. G. Bellinger, Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 1900–1990 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005). On feeding Soviet troops, see Montefiore, Stalin, 556.

  214 At the same time, Stalin: Montefiore, Stalin, 538–49, 556–57, quotes on 543, 547, 558–59. See also Adam B. Ulam, The Rivals: America and Russia since World War II (New York: Viking, 1971), 112–13.

  215 In a three-thousand-word cable: Cable of September 27, 1946, available on the Internet at the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

  216 Novikov saw: Dallek, Truman, 46–48.

  217 In 1946 false assumptions: Ibid., 42.

  218 Much more, however, was at work: Gallup Poll, 1935–1948, 544–46, 549, 567, 575–76, 581–82, 587, 589, 591, 601, 615.

  219 Any attempt Truman: On HST’s domestic difficulties, see Donovan, Conflict and Crisis, chaps. 18–19, 22–24; and McCullough, Truman, 520–24.

  220 Yet Fulbright reflected: Gallup Poll, 1935–1948, 512, 587, 604, 613.

  221 A congressional race: Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 12–15.

  222 It wasn’t only Nixon: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, 122–33.

  223 Unlike in the 1930s: Robert Dallek, Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908–1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 230–41.

  223 No national political figure: William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 246, 394, 512; Richard Rovere, Senator Joe McCarthy (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), 5–6.

  224 A dustup: Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 489–90.

  225 The Amerasia affair: Ibid.

  225 The myth: Dallek, An Unfinished Life, 159–60.

  226 The public clamor: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 1:234–35, and English ed. (London: Penguin, 2003), 267–68.

  227 Whether Roosevelt and Truman: Dallek, Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, vii; Dallek, Truman, 47–48.

  227 Yet on January 6, 1947: Schlesinger and Israel, State of the Union Messages, 2939, 2947.

  228 Truman’s hopes: Gilbert, Never Despair, 290.

  228 A series of fierce: Donovan, Conflict and Crisis, 272–75. “Paralyzed” is quoted in Manchester, Glory and the Dream, 434–36.

  229 The first order of business: Offner, Another Such Victory, 193–99. Novikov’s warning is in the cable of September 27, 1946.

  231 Truman knew: Truman Doctrine address, March 12, 1947, http://avalon.law. yale.edu/20th_century/trudoc.asp.

  232 George Kennan: Kennan, Memoirs, chap. 13.

  233 An unfortunate result: McCullough, Truman, 550–53.

  234 Truman’s speech had: Ulam, Rivals, 126.

  234 Truman’s speech did not surprise: Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 150–51.

  235 In March 1947: Cray, General of the Army, 583–85.

  236 Yet in spite of Marshall’s: Ibid., 598–606.

  238 Marshall returned: George C. Marshall, “The Marshall Plan,” June 5, 1947, available on the History Place Web site, http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/marshall.htm. The best account of the origins and consequences of the plan is in Greg Behrman, The Most Noble Adventure: The Marshall Plan and the Time When America Helped Save Europe (New York: Free Press, 2007). Also see Niall Ferguson, “Dollar Diplomacy: How Much Did the Marshall Plan Really Matter?” New Yorker, August 27, 2007.

  239 Marshall’s words: Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 432–40; Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 172–79.

  Chapter 8: War by Other Means

  241 “Whereas the Truman Doctrine”: The quotes are in Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 176–77.

  242 In seeing the Truman: Plato is quoted in Jay, Dictionary of Political Quotations.

  243 Countering affinity: Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 148–49; J. Robert Oppenheimer, “Atomic Weapons and American Policy,” Foreign Affairs, July 1953, 529.

  243 The danger: Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 178.

  244 The object now: “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, July 1947.

  245 When the article produced widespread: Kennan, Memoirs, 354–59.

  245 Within days of the: Walter Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947). Also see Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), 443–46.

  246 Kennan later described: Kennan, Memoirs, 357–67.

  247 Yet Kennan did not: Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 180–81.

  247 As Kennan warned: Kennan’s quote is in Foreign A
ffairs, July 1947.

  248 In the meantime: See Steel, Lippmann, 487–88.

  248 The two world wars had: “The NSC and CI A did not create Truman’s feared ‘Gestapo’ or military dictatorship. But together they gave the military pervasive and profound influence from preparation to execution of foreign policy, for both overt and covert activities.” See Offner, Another Such Victory, 187–93.

  249 Dean Acheson: Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W. W. Norton, 1961), 214. Kennan is quoted in the New York Times, May 18, 1997. Clark Clifford, Counsel to the President: A Memoir (New York: Anchor Books, 1991), 170.

  250 In September 1947: Arnold A. Rogow, James Forrestal: Study of Personality, Politics and Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1963), especially 55–56, 155–56, 247–49.

  251 During the summer and fall of 1947: Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 175–77; Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 436–40.

  251 At the same time, Truman: Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1977), 327–29, 339–41.

  252 George Marshall: Quoted in Cray, General of the Army, 591.

  252 Instead, Marshall asked: Kennan, Memoirs, 378–79; Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 170; Offner, Another Such Victory, 233.

  253 As for Germany: Cray, General of the Army, 638–43; Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 198–99; Offner, Another Such Victory, 233; Ulam, Rivals, 122–23.

  255 The collapse of the conference: Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 179–80.

  255 In December, when Truman: Truman is quoted in Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 199–200.

  256 A crisis over Czechoslovakia: Offner, Another Such Victory, 236.

  256 The death of Czech: Kennan, Memoirs, 399–400.

  257 Stalin’s clamp-down: Deutscher, Stalin, 583–88; Gallup Poll, 1935–1948, 721.

  257 Kennan understood the limits: Kennan, Memoirs, 399.

  258 But Kennan’s rational: Quoted in Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 202.

  258 Despite an understanding: Kennan, Memoirs, 400–01; Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 210–12; Offner, Another Such Victory, 237–40; Truman, Memoirs, 2:241–43.

  259 In the spring of 1948, if doubts: See Offner’s excellent discussion of the Berlin crisis in Another Such Victory, chap. 10. On Stalin and Dobrynin and Stalin’s dealings with rivals and problems with Tito, see Montefiore, Stalin, 515, 575–76, 578, 628, 631, 635; and Radzinsky, Stalin, 517–27, “idea” quote 526–27.

  263 Kennan, who had a better: Kennan, Memoirs, 403–04.

  266 The likelihood: Gallup Poll, 1935–1948, 724, 727, 745, 749–51, 753, 757, 759, 761, 764–65.

  266 But Truman carried off: Clifford, Counsel to the President, 189–94, 200–02, 230–32; Offner, Another Such Victory, 238–39, 241–42, 245–46, 264–65. On civil rights, see McCullough, Truman, 247, 532, 569–70, 586–90. On Clifford’s appearance, see McCullough, Truman, 502. Clifford’s technique of intimidation was related to me by Brian VanDeMark, who assisted Clifford and Richard Holbrooke in preparing Clifford’s Counsel to the President.

  269 No foreign policy issue: McCullough, Truman, 599–620, quote on 620.

  Chapter 9: The Military Solution

  271 In choosing a new secretary: George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1949–1958 (New York: Random House, 1972), 784.

  272 Dean Acheson: Chace, Acheson, chaps. 1–7, especially pp. 62–67; Beisner, Dean Acheson, 1–12, 15.

  273 Acheson learned: Chace, Acheson, 68; Acheson, Present at the Creation, 104, 200.

  274 In choosing Acheson: Acheson, Present at the Creation, 250–53.

  275 On taking office: Ibid., 257–58, 259, 264–66.

  276 It was the least effective way: Ibid., 267–75; Gallup Poll, 1949–1958, 800 and 815.

  277 Without NATO: Montefiore, Stalin, 502–04, 539, 599.

  278 Although Truman and Acheson: Acheson, Present at the Creation, 307–13; Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 9, 116, 312–13, 325–27; David E. Lilienthal, The Journals of David Lilienthal, 1945–1950: The Atomic Energy Years (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 570–71; Gallup Poll, 1949–1958, 867, 869.

  279 Few in either: Taubman, Stalin’s American Policy, 206–211, 222–26; Stalin quote in Montefiore, Stalin, 601.

  279 Few in the West: For a discussion of the tensions in postwar U.S. foreign policy, see Scott Lucas and Kaeten Mitry, “Illusions of Coherence: George F. Kennan, U.S. Strategy and Political Warfare in the Early Cold War, 1946–1950,” Diplomatic History 33, no. 1 (January 2009): 39–66.

  280 In May 1949: Acheson, Present at the Creation, 291–301.

  281 No one in Washington: Kennan, Memoirs, chaps. 18 and 19 on “Germany” and “The Future of Europe,” but especially 426–27, 464–65.

  283 Besides, a Chinese Communist: U.S. Department of State, China White Paper, vol. 1. The letter of transmittal is on iii–xvii. HST’s views on the Nationalists is in Offner, Another Such Victory, 307.

  285 The backdrop to: Offner, Another Such Victory, chap. 12, especially pp. 324–25, 330–36. The quote is from Acheson’s letter, in U.S. Department of State, China White Paper, xvi–xvii.

  286 The depiction of: Offner, Another Such Victory, 334–35.

  286 In fact, the 1949 White Paper: Chace, Acheson, 218–20.

  287 American public opinion: Gallup Poll, 1949–1958, 852–53, 868–69.

  287 Because Truman and Acheson: Chace, Acheson, 220–22.

  288 Mesmerized by: Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence, 492–95; Montefiore, Stalin, 603–07.

  289 Stalin, who was busy: Kennan, Nuclear Delusion, 33–34.

  290 In January 1950: The Wherry quote about Shanghai: Eric F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade—and After: America, 1945–1960 (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), 116. The LBJ quote about McCarthy: Dallek, Lone Star Rising, 452–53. For the rest, see Chace, Acheson, 225–40; Robert J. Donovan, Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949–1953 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), 162–70.

  293 The decision to build: Kennan, Nuclear Delusion, xvi; McCullough, Truman, 756–58; Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 416–30.

  296 Was there an alternative: Kennan, Nuclear Delusion, 32–33. Also see “Interview with Herbert York,” November 15, 1998, National Security Archive, George Washington University; and Thompson, The Hawk and the Dove, 105–09.

  298 The argument for all-out: Fred Kaplan, “Paul Nitze: The Man Who Brought Us the Cold War,” Slate, October 21, 2004, http://slate.msn.com/id/2108510/; Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 355–60.

  300 The military buildup: For Acheson’s speeches, see Beisner, Dean Acheson, 248–51.

  Chapter 10: Limited War

  302 In South Korea: For the Council on Foreign Relations discussion, see chap. 7 of this book.

  302 To be sure, some American: Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 167–68, 251–53.

  303 Despite the decision: Chace, Acheson, 222–23; Beisner, Dean Acheson, 326–29.

  304 Perceptions in North Korea: See Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997), 16–23; Suh Dae-Sook, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); and Andrei Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea, 1945–1960 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002).

  305 Like other authoritarian: W. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941–1946 (New York: Random House, 1975), 535–36. My thanks to Professor Melvyn Leffler for calling Harriman’s quote to my attention. On Kim’s behavior, see Don Oberdorfer, Two Koreas, 21. Discussion with retired Congressman Stephen Solarz, March 11, 2009.

  306 From the moment: On Rhee, see “Syngman Rhee (Yu Sungman, 1875–1965),” The Encyclopedia of Asian History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons for the Asia Society, 1988); Oberdorfer, Two Koreas, 8; William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, N.J.: Prin
ceton University Press, 1995), 14–15, 20–21, 24, 27–28, 30, 32, 36–37. The quote about the two Koreans sitting down to eat is on 21.

  307 The clash of wills: On Kissinger and the Vietnamese, see Dallek, Nixon and Kissinger, 444.

  308 The outbreak of the Korean conflict: On the run-up to the war, see Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol. 1, Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945–1947, and vol. 2, The Roaring of the Cataract, 1947–1950 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981 and 1990); Bruce Cumings and Kathryn Weathersby, “An Exchange on Korean War Origins,” in The Cold War in Asia: New Evidence on the Korean War, Cold War International History Project Bulletin no. 6–7 (Winter 1995/1996): 120–22; Kennan, Memoirs, 395–96; Stueck, Korean War, 31–41; Chen, Mao’s China, 54–55; Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 78–81; Pechatnov, “Soviet Union and the Outside World.” The Stalin quote is in Vladislav M. Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), 71, 299.

  311 The news of Kim’s invasion: For the U.S. decision to enter the fighting, see Glenn D. Paige, The Korean Decision, June 24–June 30, 1950 (New York: Free Press, 1968), Webb-Truman exchange on 141 and 304. Also see Kennan, Nuclear Delusion, xiii–xiv, 34, 36; Stueck, Korean War, 41–44.

  313 In the spring of 1950: Gallup Poll, 1949–1958, 903, 905, 933, 941–42.

  313 In refusing to acknowledge: Offner, Another Such Victory, 372–74.

  314 The Soviet absence: Zubok, Failed Empire, 80–81. On the H-bomb, see Jeremy Bernstein, “He Changed History,” New York Review of Books, April 9, 2009, 33.

  315 Stalin neglected to say: Montefiore, Stalin, 607–11. Madison is quoted in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., War and the American Presidency (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 47.

  315 The Korean conflict: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Imperial Presidency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), 132–35. See also Schlesinger, War and the American Presidency, 53–54.