Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938

In this set of chapters, the authors discuss the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War as the chasm between the former Allies grew. Chronologically, these are the years 1945 through 1949. They focus on the ideological foundations of a geopolitical power shift from the American side and its practical expression through the Truman Doctrine and the global policy of containment. The authors also discuss the Marshall Plan for European recovery after World War II.

First, Ambrose and Brinkley trace the conflict over Eastern Europe, from the Balkans to the Baltic, deep into history because of the region’s strategic importance and its resources. After the Cold War, the Americans and the British positioned themselves in the Mediterranean, West Germany as well as Africa. The Soviet Union had control of Eastern Europe because the Red Army was singlehandedly responsible for up to 80% of Nazi German losses which occurred on the Eastern Front. However, “America was unwilling to accept Russian domination of East Europe” (53). For example, one of the key debates was over the status of Poland in the context of the 1945 Yalta conference. Stalin brought up legitimate security concerns that in the first half of the 20th century, Russia and then the USSR was invaded twice through the Polish corridor. What type of government, in terms of ideology, would rule Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe was discussed at this meeting.

The Truman administration felt entitled to take the hard line because “American postwar policy was based, in part, on the belief that no matter what the United States did or said, the Russians could not protest because they had to have American money” (57). However, American disapproval of the Soviet actions did not translate into military action, and the policy of economic pressure failed:

In the end a deal was made: The West recognized the Oder-Neisse line as Germany’s eastern border, and Stalin accepted 25 percent of German capital equipment from the Western zones as his share of reparations. Fifteen percent of this figure was to be in exchange for food from eastern Germany (65).

Churchill gave his famous 1946 Iron Curtain speech, and the Cold War was in full swing. In March 1947, Truman announced to Congress what came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, in which he argued that the world is split in half between freedom and oppression. According to the president, it was the US policy to “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressure” (75). Similarly, Under Secretary Dean Acheson subscribed to the domino theory “which held that if one nation fell to the Communists, its neighbors would surely follow” (79). Overall, it was at this moment that the US foreign policy became truly global, while the military went in the opposite direction and underwent “the most rapid demobilization in the history of the world” (75).

In practice, the first expression of these ideas was Truman seeking aid for Greece and Turkey. Germany, in turn, was on the way to being divided in half: “There would be no progress in Europe without including Germany, and there could be no improvement in Germany without antagonizing the Russians” (85). Eventually, the West formed a separate West German government, and the Soviet Union followed with East Germany. In 1949, Americans and key Western European powers like Britain and France formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization pledging themselves “to mutual assistance in case of aggression against any of the signatories” (101). At the same time, the Americans and the Soviet Union continued to cooperate on some issues within the context of the United Nations, such as the formation of the state of Israel in 1948.

An important practical aspect to Truman’s policy was NSC 68, a 1950 policy document for the Cold War covering important issues such as militarization. This document “had been worldwide in its implications” and “provided the justification for America’s assuming the role of world policeman” (111). One of the key non-military ways to carry out this foreign policy was economic support: “Militarily, only with a healthy economy could Europe support the troops necessary to stop the Red Army” (84). Truman argued that “his doctrine and the Marshall Plan ‘are the two halves of the same walnut’” (85). Launched in 1948, the Marshall Plan for postwar European recovery, a “keystone to containment” (90) involved a complex series of aid, loans, and shaping European institutions with American oversight. In response, the USSR announced its own Molotov Plan for its satellites in Eastern Europe.

Ideologically, the containment policy originated with the statesman George Kennan, whose 1947 article “The Sources of Soviet Conflict” soon became “the quasi-official statement of American foreign policy” (95). On the one hand, Kennan argued that there was “the innate antagonism between capitalism and socialism” (95), and the Kremlin sought world domination. On the other hand, he believed that the USSR did not pose “any serious military threat nor that they wanted war” (95).

The authors also discuss the limitations of having nuclear weapons. First, they were not powerful enough to act as a deterrent for the Soviet Union in 1945-1949. Second, they could only be used in extreme cases. Even at this early stage, there was communication between the United States and the Soviet Union—with the first successful test conducted in 1949—about the possibility of an agreement about the atomic weapons:

Strangely, the world was being drawn into two spheres of influence: the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. But there was also a new global club, one which caused the world deep worry. It was the Atomic Club (74).

Domestic organization in the US also changed when the Congress created the National Security Act and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). At first, the CIA was not authorized to “carry out covert operations abroad” and was “restricted to gathering and analyzing intelligence” (92). Soon afterward, however, Truman “authorized the CIA to engage in a broad range of covert operations directed against the Soviet Union and Communists everywhere” (92).