Truman & Containment with John Moser | BRI Scholar Talks: Cold War & The Presidency Series #2

0:00 the president was no longer simply the president of the united states but president of the but leader of the free world right that’s a formulation that would have been unheard of for previous for previous presidents even presidents like woodrow wilson who were globally inclined they never saw themselves as being head of the head of head of the free world so this it almost gave the president an

0:22 international constituency uh and and this clearly led to an increase of of of presidential power [Music] hi this is tony williams senior fellow at bri and we want to welcome you to another episode of the cold war and the

0:42 presidency series and for this episode we’re honored to have john moser to speak about truman and the cold war in this series our main question is really going to be on on how individual president-shaped executive powers during the cold war by way of introduction john moser is a professor

1:04 of history at ashland university and chair of bulk the department of history and political science and the ashbrook center’s master of arts in american history and government he is an expert on world war ii in american foreign policy and the author of four books including the global great depression and the coming of world war ii john i

1:25 want to thank you for joining us pleasure to be here tony yeah i really appreciate it uh you know it’s such an important topic we we just spoke to sean mcneeken uh about fdr uh stalin and and the origins of the cold war uh during world war ii and some of the tensions in the alliance and and this is just going to be a great segue right into

1:47 uh you know the start of the cold war under the truman administration uh so so maybe we’ll just jump right in uh after fighting as allies during world war ii you know the united states and the soviet union emerged from the war as the world’s two superpowers and and they were increasingly enemies american policy americans were really

2:08 concerned about soviet expansionism including soviet diplomat and expert george kennedy who helped formulate a policy called containment in his long telegram and the mr x article so john what what was containment and and how does it really shape american foreign policy throughout most of the cold war

2:29 containment was an extremely it you can’t even really call it a strategy it’s sort of a framework under which multiple strategies could operate one of my favorite books on the cold war is by john lewis gaddis called strategies of containment it talks about how various presidents they all adhered to containment in some

2:51 way but they applied it in in a very different form but but as kennen advanced the idea in his famous long telegram in 1946 was that if the soviets are going to look for any opportunity that they can that they can find to uh to advance their power and they’re

3:12 going to try pushing pushing pushing and if the united states as the leader of the free world shows itself willing to block those advances uh again and again right he said in an article in 1947 he called for her for calm patient firm patient containment so you

3:33 every time they push you say no you don’t do it that eventually the soviets would would learn that they’re not getting anywhere through this strategy and they would they would either moderate the strategy or maybe even the whole regime would fall uh so that and and when that was supposed to happen who knows i mean kennan would later say that

3:53 he only meant for the term containment the containment to apply to stalin and that once stalin was gone there was never there wasn’t any really real need to continue it but by then containment had sort of taken on a life of its own and every president as i said before practiced it right very good well let’s look specifically at maybe truman’s

4:15 formulation and understanding of it in 1947 he delivers this important speech advocating aid to greece and turkey to resist communism and he says i quote i believe that it must be the policy of the united states to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside

4:37 pressures unquote so what was the truman doctrine and does it provide sort of an expansive view of american foreign policy of sort of expanded commitments around the globe for the united states yeah when i when i teach this to students sometimes they they miss how important this really is that well isn’t that what america has always done

4:58 i like to illustrate uh to use this example to illustrate the sea change that occurred in u.s foreign policy over the course of the 1940s in 1940 germany was able to overrun much of europe including france and while americans were dismayed by this nobody ever said we ought to send troops

5:19 to stop them right 10 years later 10 years that’s nothing 10 years later north korean forces invade south korea a place where most americans probably would have would have had a hard time identifying on a map north korea invades south korea and u.s troops go and fight and and that has the overwhelming support of americans and part of it of course is part of the

5:40 change is the result of the attack on pearl harbor and world war ii but the truman doctrine is another big part of it the idea that the united states was now going to take responsibility right for stepping up behind to support free peoples all over the world that was a huge commitment among those who who really were kind of taken aback by it

6:02 was george kennan kennen said wait a minute this is not really what i had in mind this is this is going to be a huge open-ended commitment to every every country that feels that feels threatened um but but truman believed that you know kennen was kind of an old school real politique right

6:23 kind of a kind of guy there there there parts of the world that are that are really within that are really critical to american interests and therefore have to be defended others not so much truman said the american people don’t think like that they think in terms of right versus right versus wrong we’re going to stand up for freedom and by qualifying it by saying well

6:44 we’re going to stand up for freedom in places that are vital to american interests but other places we’re going to you know not worry about that’s not going to fly with the american people so truman chooses this very expansive uh way of putting it i mean the speech itself was aimed at greece and turkey which just about everybody agreed those are really really

7:04 important um he cert you know he certainly did not have in mind uh or well kennan certainly would have been okay with upholding greece and turkey but but other places in the world not so much right great uh and digging around maybe in some lesser-known uh things here with the start of the cold war the national

7:26 security act of 1947 and also the national security council document nsc 68. they seem to have a very significant impact upon the executive branch and and the creation of this national security state this military buildup what were they uh and how do they change american military

7:46 capabilities during the cold war yeah um nsc sorry the national security act um was was really aimed at streamlining the armed forces you had of course the army and the navy and they had been traditionally separate cabinet cabinet level posts secretary of each uh and then you also had

8:07 the army had its own air force and the navy had its own had its own air force but there had been a push throughout the war for the creation of a separate independent air force so you have these three different three different branches and it if you know anything about military history is separate branches are always fighting uh fighting over resources and the thought

8:27 was well let’s unify it under the secretary of defense and we’re going to reduce that and i suppose it reduced it it just really it moved the scene of the fighting from the cabinet where where the secretary of the army the secretary of navy would go at it to uh under secretaries where that’s where the fighting would take place under the leadership of a single secretary of defense uh and and and the

8:50 first secretary of defense was a guy named james forestall the weird thing was forestall had been a prominent opponent of the idea of uniting this he said this is this this task is too big for any single member of uh every any single individual and uh sure enough after a few years in the position he uh he had to step down he basically

9:11 suffered a nervous collapse and tragically he committed suicide not not not long afterward so part of it was to in the in an effort to streamline the armed forces and create a single military establishment you create this department of defense that encompasses all the armed forces another aspect of it was the creation of

9:32 the central intelligence agency again it’s a matter of streamlining uh there was army intelligence there was naval intelligence and then there was the office of strategic services which was created during world war ii which conducted all sorts of dirty tricks against the against the the the axis powers uh during the war

9:53 uh and the idea was we’re going to unite these in one single body truman was a little bit leery of this he was afraid that it was going to be a to use his word a gestapo um so that so that’s the second aspect the third aspect of the national security act is the uh uh was the creation of the national security council which was um there was a there was a

10:15 national security adviser and then the council also would include the president and the secretary of defense the secretary of state and and a couple of others and uh and and and it was to serve as kind of an advisory body to the president and nsc 68 was hardly the first thing it produced but it was the first

10:36 really important document uh the national security act was passed in 1947 nsc 68 was was sent to truman in early april 1950 and it was written in large part in response to the uh development of of atomic

10:57 capabilities by the soviet union the soviets had tested their first uh nuclear weapon in in 1949. and nfc 68 really portrayed the cold war as an apocalyptic showdown of tyranny versus freedom uh kennen when when he saw this said that this is this is exactly what i’ve been

11:18 trying to avoid for years that’s not what what containment’s about um and but uh the author the main author is a guy named paul nitza who was head of the state department’s policy planning staff and nitz’s idea was look if we want to convince truman and truman was the audience for this we’re gonna we’re gonna keep we’re gonna

11:39 keep it kind of simple not not that truman was an ignorant or stupid man by any means but but but he you know he he wasn’t particularly subtle when it came to international affairs uh so we’re going to portray this as a monumental global struggle of good versus evil in which at the moment the united states and the

12:00 free world are really outgunned uh in terms of conventional weapons the soviets dwarfed the firepower of the west and now the soviets have the you have the atomic bomb what do we have to do now well we have to increase the considerably our spending on the military interestingly nfc68 did not

12:21 specify any amounts it just said there’s going to be a big buildup and when truman got it he thought well you know i kind of agree with this assessment on the other hand i i i’ve got lots of domestic spending priorities i don’t want to raise taxes because that’ll be unpopular i don’t know if i if we really want to do this so he so he he in traditional

12:43 presidential form he set up a committee and said study this and come up with some estimates as to hey is this worth doing b how much is it going to cost and the committee was doing and the committee was supposed to get its its uh it’s its estimates to truman by i think july 1st 1950 well before that happened june 25th

13:07 north korean forces invaded south korea and for truman this was evident okay the communist world up until now it’s been kind of a political the cold war has been kind of a political battle but now communism has shown that it’s going to take aggressive military action uh truman was much more inclined to support the

13:28 conclusions of nsc 68 after the start of the korean war yeah thank you john now and and that’s a great segue for uh my next question which is about the korean war um truman very interestingly receives authorization to go to war from from the united nations right that there’s no congressional declaration of war

13:49 how does this pres presidential unilateralism provide a precedent for successors to fight those major wars without the declaration of war which obviously the last one was was was world war ii yeah yeah it it it i don’t know that truman even put a whole lot of thought into whether to ask for a declaration of war the the the arguments for for why he

14:12 chose not to do it are really not terribly lofty i mean on the one of them kind of was the other was really based on partisan politics the the laughter idea was if you go to war the american people expect certain things out of a war right it’s all out you do everything you can to destroy the destroy the enemy and he knew that he

14:33 wanted this to be a limited war he wanted to to to drive the north koreans out of south korea but he did not want an expansion of the war he didn’t want the soviets or the red chinese to get involved and if you call it a war then it’s going to be it’s going to make it harder to sell the idea that this is a limited conflict then there was the partisan one he was

14:55 dealing with a very partisan republican party that didn’t have a majority but it was very strong at the time and the republicans wanted to blame the administration for the start of the war and what they seized upon was a speech that had been given earlier in 1950 by under secretary of state

15:16 dean atchison atchison was talking about how it was u.s policy to have a security perimeter in the pacific and he said it’s going to include japan and the philippines and the aleutian islands uh and and he did not include south include south korea in this

15:36 and when just a few months later north korea invaded south korea republicans said atchison basically gave them the green light to invade now it’s it’s it’s not true um we know now since the opening of the soviet archives what really drove the decision and and no they were not paying attention to atchison’s speech by any by any means but truman was concerned

16:00 that if he went to congress to request declaration of war he wasn’t afraid that the republicans would say no that would look unpatriotic and the american people were in support of of of of of the commitment of forces he was afraid that republicans were going to use the opportunity to embarrass the administration and say see we wouldn’t have had to do that if it had if it hadn’t been for

16:21 this so he said look we’re this is we’re not this is going to be a war uh in a press conference discussing this a reporter said so would you call it a police action and and truman said yeah that’s basically it and and that’s the term that stuck truman didn’t come up with it it was this this this reporter said about police action yeah yeah yeah police action so uh that is but it is definitely made

16:44 it uh made it easier for subsequent presidents to uh to dispense with a formal congressional declaration yeah very good all right well my last question so how does truman’s expansive view of american foreign policy and global responsibilities during the cold war that we’ve talked about and you know unilateralism during the korean war

17:05 how does that all shape executive power in your view uh and and especially not only for his administration but then for his successors around the cold war yeah well it’s it’s it became common under uh under true but even to a certain sent under under roosevelt um to say that the president the

17:27 president was no longer simply the president of the united states but president of the but leader of the free world right that’s a formulation that would have been unheard of for previous for previous presidents even presidents like woodrow wilson who were globally inclined they never saw themselves as being head of the head of head of the free world so this it almost gave the president an

17:49 international constituency uh and and this clearly led to an increase of of of presidential power of course the military establishment would uh would would continue to grow presidents would continue to act without without congressional authorization congress in 73 would try to claw back some of that

18:10 power in the in in the war powers act but you know over the long haul i don’t know that the war powers act is amounted to is amounted to much at all uh so so definitely the the globalization of of of u.s interests the threat of the cold war the notion that there was a free world and and and honestly

18:31 if if the united states wasn’t going to be the leader of the free world who was uh that that really makes the the debate more more contemporary so some said as soon as the cold war was over okay the united states can go back just to being a to binding its own business but others said well wait a minute if you look at periods when there has not been some

18:53 some dominant hegemonic power you see a whole lot of instability so even though the cold war is over the united states still should play some kind of role like that and generally generally it has and presidents have maintained the kind of power that that that truman claim truman and his successors claimed for the presidency

19:14 all right john i i i wish we had a few hours to talk about this uh but but we appreciate your time and and thank you very much for coming on that that was very interesting glad to be here i enjoyed it great well thank you for joining us for this mini curriculum video series on the cold war and the presidency check out our other videos on fdr

19:36 kennedy nixon and kissinger and also reagan with interviews with several leading historians on this very important topic thank you for joining us