The Social Construction of the Soviet Threat: A Study in the Politics of Representation

Time, May 23, 1988, Vol. 131, No. 21, p. 25.

For two notable exceptions, each acutely sensitive to the role of interpretive frameworks, see Yergin Daniel , Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), and Melvyn P. Leffler, “The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945–48,” American Historical Review, April 1984, Vol. 89, No. 2, pp. 346–381.

DePorte A.W. , Europe Between the Superpowers: The Enduring Balance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), pp. 97–98, 106, 118–19.

The concept of a script and its function of guiding interpretation and performance are developed at greater length by the author in a forthcoming book. See Nathanson Charles E. , In Sympathy with Labor: Adam Smith and the Making of a Liberal Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, forthcoming).

For Aristotle's concept of citizenship, see Barker Ernest (editor and translator) The Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), III.i-vi., especially iv.7-15 and vi.9, and also iv.xi.6-8 and VII.ix.7. On the history of republican theory and practice, see J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). An important earlier work is Zera S. Fink, The Classical Republicans: an Essay in the Recovery of a Pattern of Thought in Seventeenth Century England (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1945).

This paragraph draws on Pocock, ibid, chapter 15; Wood Gordon S. , The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969); Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1980); Richard H. Kohn, Eagle and Sword: The Beginnings of the Military Establishment in America (New York: The Free Press, 1975); and Russell F. Weigley, Towards an American Army: Military Thought from Washington to Marshall (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962).

Out of a large secondary literature on the subject, the spirit of this republican dilemma is perhaps best depicted by McConnell Grant , Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Vintage Books, 1970). On early premonitions of the danger of corporate power, see McCoy, ibid, pp. 253–59. The tenuous moral position of the modern corporation in the Republic is conveyed most sharply, of course, in the language of those who fought the corporation's growing power. Thus Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis dissenting in Ligget v Lee: “The prevalence of the corporation in America has led men of this generation to act, at times, as if the privilege of doing business in corporate form were inherent in the citizen; and has led them to accept the evils attendant upon the free and unrestricted use of the corporate mechanism as if these evils were the inescapable price of civilized life and, hence, to be borne with resignation. Throughout the greater part of our history a different view prevailed. Although the value of this instrumentality in commerce and industry was fully recognized, incorporation for business was commonly denied long after it had been freely granted for religious, educational and charitable purposes. It was denied because of fear. Fear of encroachment upon the liberties and opportunities of the individual. Fear of the subjection of labor to capital. Fear of monopoly. Fear that the absorption of capital by corporations, and their perpetual life, might bring evils similar to those which attended mortmain. There was a sense of some insidious menace inherent in large aggregations of capital, particularly when held by corporations.” Quoted in Henry A. Wallace, Whose Constitution: An Inquiry into the General Welfare (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1936), pp. 165–66.

The subject is notoriously complex and still awaits comprehensive treatment from the perspective of US republicanism. On the debate in the early Republic over the importance of foreign markets and free trade for preserving republican virtue, and on the relation of this debate to foreign and military policy, see the suggestive material in McCoy, op cit, note 6, pp. 76–104, 144–45, 171–178, 197–199, 205–208, 218–223, 237–244. On the fitful efforts in the half-century after the Civil War to make the United States into an active world power and the republican dilemmas thus posed, see material in Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), chapters 9 and 10; Towards an American Army, op cit, note 6, chapters 7 and 9; Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), chapters 9 and 10; Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansionism, 1860–1898 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp. 85–101; and Walter Karp, The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic [1890–1920] (New York: Harper Colophon, 1980).

The Wilson story is told brilliantly from a republican perspective by Karp, ibid. The characterization of the republican dilemma in the next paragraph draws upon evidence in the following: Huntington, ibid, chapters 9–11; McConnell, op cit, note 7, pp. 60–70; McCoy, op cit, note 6; William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), chapter 9; J. Samuel Walker, Henry A. Wallace and American Foreign Policy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), chapters 1–4; Weigley, ibid..

See, for example, Wallace , op cit, note 7, and also his New Frontiers (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1934), Rexford G. Tugwell, The Battle for Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935); Ellis W. Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 11–12; and Theodore Rosenof, Patterns of Political Economy in America: The Failure to Develop a Democratic Left Synthesis, 1933–1950 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1983). Justice Cardozza's comment analyzing the depression is representative: “There is a widespread belief that the existing unemployment is the result, in large part, of the gross inequality in the distribution of wealth and income which giant corporations have fostered; that by the control which the few have exerted through giant corporations, individual initiative and effort are being paralyzed, creative power impaired and human happiness lessened …,” op cit, note 7.

This analysis and these policy goals appear in the writings of what may be called “the republican left wing” of the New Deal, including especially Wallace, Tugwell and the economic planners in and out of office who were closely associated with them. On the need for restoring republican balance against corporate power by means of democratic economic planning, in addition to the works cited above, see Tugwell's “The Principle of Planning and the Institution of Laissez-Faire,” American Economic Review, March 1932, Vol. 22, supplement. For secondary works on this brand of New Deal planning and the fears it aroused, see especially Hawley, ibid; Otis L. Graham, Toward a Planned Society: From Roosevelt to Nixon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), chapter 1; and Marion Clawson, New Deal Planning: The National Resources Planning Board (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981). It is important that this kind of thinking continued in official circles throughout the 1930s and into the war period, found an important new resource in the publication of John Maynard Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), and would have had a vigorous proponent in the White House after the war if Wallace had won the vice-presidential nomination in 1944. On the influence of Keynes on New Deal planners and the development of a business response, see Robert Collins, The Business Response to Keynes, 1929–1964 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981).

A comprehensive account of the widespread and diverse sources of resistance to the New Deal has yet to be written. The rhetoric of patriotic republicanism and anticommunism that united these otherwise divergent interests became a crucial factor in the politics of the early Cold War (see below). For suggestive material on the use of anticommunist rhetoric to defend pre-New Deal positions of power, privilege and influence, See Hawley, op cit, note 10, pp. 143, 151–158, 165, 395–398; Ronald A. Mulder, The Insurgent Progressives in the United States Senate and the New Deal, 1933–1939 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1979); James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative Coalition in Congress, 1933–1939 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967); Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982); Harvey L. Levenstein, Communism, Anticommunism and the CIO (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1981); James Boylan, The New Deal Coalition and the Election of 1946 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1981); and James A. Gross, The Making of the National Labor Relations Board, Vol. 2: The Reshaping of the National Labor Relations Board: National Labor Policy in Transition, 1937–1947 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981).

On the increasingly strident language and unfinished agenda of the New Deal's leftwing, see Hawley, op cit, note 10; Walker, op cit, note 9; Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973); and Norman D. Markowitz, The Rise and Fall of the People's Century: Henry A. Wallace and American Liberalism, 1941–1948 (New York: The Free Press, 1973). An interesting example of these concerns was Thurman Arnold's fear that the partial reforms of the New Deal had produced a “Broker State,” the policies of which would further undermine the republican character of the polity. In a 1944 article, “The Coming Economic Conflict,” Arnold, who had been director of the antitrust division of the Justice Department, warned that stringent public regulation and renewed antimonopoly activity would be needed to protect the consumer from “irreconcilable pressure groups, each seeking a larger share of the diminishing national income, each destroying purchasing power in order to maintain artificial prices for itself while the increasing number of the unorganized and insecure compel the government to provide subsidies out of the same diminishing national income,” ibid..

Markowitz , op cit, note 12, Walker, op cit, note 12; and Richard J. Walton, Henry Wallace, Harry Truman, and the Cold War (New York: Viking Press, 1973).

“The Price of Free World Victory,” later known as “The Century of Common Man,” was first delivered as a speech to the Free World Association in New York City on May 8, 1942, six months after the United States entered the war. PM, a leftwing New York newspaper, published it twice. It appeared as an advertisement in The Washington Post and Women's Wear Daily. Issued next as a pamphlet, it sold 20,000 copies in a few weeks. Federal agencies then distributed hundreds of thousands of copies. The speech was widely interpreted at the time as a New Deal answer to Henry Luce's “The American Century” (see below), but more recent interpreters have tended to discount the differences between the global visions of Wallace and Luce. For a critical comment on this tendency, see Markowitz, op cit, note 12, pp. 53–54. The Wallace speech has been reprinted in Peter G. Filene (editor), American Views of Soviet Russia, 1917–1965 (Homewood, II: The Dorsey Press, 1968), pp. 190–196. It is best read in the context of his other wartime and post-war speeches. For example: “We shall decide some time in 1943 or 1944 whether to plant the seeds of World War No. III. That war will be probable if we fail to demonstrate that we can furnish full employment after this war comes to an end and fascist interests motivated largely by anti-Russian bias get control of our government. Unless the Western democracies and Russia come to a satisfactory understanding before the war ends, I very much fear that World War No. III will be inevitable. …”.

See Mulder , op cit, note 12, p. 302–304; and also Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–45 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983).

Life, February 17, 1941, Vol. 10, pp. 61–63.

See Cole , ibid, and the review by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, “Desperate Times,” New York Review of Books, November 24, 1983, p. 37. Four months before Pearl Harbor, the House passed the draft-extension bill by a single vote and 64 Democrats voted against the President. In November, more members of Congress voted against neutrality revision than had voted against Lend-Lease in March. Schlesinger claims the isolationist-interventionist debate was one of the angriest ever. See also Mulder, op cit, note 12, pp. 302–4.

Huntington , op cit, note 8, pp. 330–331. On the shift in the view of the Joint Chiefs during the war, see pp. 331–335.

Ibid, pp. 327–331. On the goals of and negotiations around the Atlantic Charter, see Martin Herz, Beginnings of the Cold War (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1966). In characterizing the general lack of clarity with respect to its role as a world power, Huntington writes of “a failure to appreciate what its long range political goals properly were by a nation immature in the ways of international politics,” op cit, note 8. In The American Way of War, Wiegely offers an equally revealing judgment, which links this “immaturity” to republican traditions and points to the break with these traditions that occurred in the Cold War: “… during 1941–45 and throughout American history until that time, the United States usually possessed no national strategy for the employment of force or the threat of force to attain political ends, except as the nation used force in wartime openly and directly in pursuit of military victories as complete as was desired or possible. … The United States was not involved in international politics continuously enough or with enough consistency of purpose to permit the development of a coherent national strategy for the consistent pursuit of political goals by diplomacy in combination with armed force. A not unhealthy corrolary of this situation was its contribution to civilian predominance over the military in the American government; when the military themselves regarded strategy as narrowly military in content, their temptations to intervene in the making of national policy were proportionately small. … During the Cold War and especially the Korean War, the belief that the United States was involved in a protracted conflict with international Communism led to a departure from historic habits and to an effort to form a national strategy for the employment of American power in defense and promotion of the country's political values and interests,” op cit, note 8, p. xix.

The emphasis here is on calculations, that is, expectations, hopes, plans, and not policies that could be immediately implemented. This paragraph and the two following are based on material from Martin Sherwin, A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1975); Gregg Herken, The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb and the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1980); Michael Sherry, Preparing for the Next War: American Plans for Postwar Defense, 1941–1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Perry McCoy Smith, The Air Force Plans for Peace, 1943–1945 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970); Robert L. Messer, The End of an Alliance: James F. Byrnes, Roosevelt, Truman, and the Origins of the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Barton J. Bernstein, “American Foreign Policy and the Origins of the Cold War,” in Barton J, Bernstein (editor), Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970), pp. 15–77, and “Roosevelt, Truman, and the Atomic Bomb, 1941–1945: A Reinterpretation,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 90, No. 1, Spring 1975, pp. 23–69; David Alan Rosenberg, “American Atomic Strategy and the Hydrogen Bomb Decision,” Journal of American History, Col. 66, 1979–80, pp. 62–87; and Melvyn P. Leffler, “The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945–48,” American Historical Review, Vol. 89, No. 2, April 1984, pp. 346–381.

On these military plans, see especially Smith, Sherry, Rosenberg and Leffler, ibid..

On the failure of Byrnes' efforts to use the bomb as a diplomatic resource with the Russians, see Messer, op cit, note 21, and also Bernstein, “Roosevelt, Truman,” op cit, note 21, pp. 62–69. On inter-service rivalry, technical difficulties, and strategic doubts about reliance upon nuclear weapons, see Sherry, op cit, note 21, chapters 4 and 7, and Rosenberg, op cit, note 21. On concern over agreements with the Soviet Union, see below and Leffler, op cit, note 21, pp. 352, 357, and Sherry, op cit, note 21.

Much of the dispute, rivalry and doubt was reflected in Cabinet-level discussions and in the diaries and memorandums of high-ranking officials. See, for example, John Morton Blum (editor), The Price of Vision: The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, (1942–1946), (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), pp. 471, 474, 476, 481–487, 489–494, 496–504, 505–511, 515–517, 545–553. Also of relevance are Barton J. Bernstein, “Roosevelt, Truman,” op cit, note 21, pp. 59–62, 65, 67; Robert Karl Manoff, “Covering the Bomb: The Nuclear Story and the News,” Working Papers, May-June, 1983; Herken, op cit, note 21, and Counsels of War (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1985), chapters 1–5; and Sherwin, op cit, note 21.

Stimson's two memorandums to Truman on September 12, 1945 are reprinted in Barton J. Bernstein and Allen J. Matusow (editors), The Truman Administration: A Documentary History (New York: Harper & Row, 1968). Excerpts also appear in Walton, op cit, note 14, pp. 53–54.

Blum , op cit, note 24, pp. 482–484 and 485–487; and Barton J. Bernstein, “The Quest for Security: American Foreign Policy and International Control of Atomic Energy, 1942–1946,” Journal of American History, Vol. 60, 1973–74, pp. 1016–1019. Within the War Department, the response to Stimson's proposal was not favorable; see Sherry, op cit, note 21, pp. 212–13.

Wallace's notes of the Cabinet meeting on September 21 indicate that Stimson offered a long defense of Russia, saying that the United States had nothing that Russia wanted and that she had nothing the United States wanted. Stimson said also that United States' relationship with Russia during recent months had been improving, and President Truman agreed.

On the difficulties that this situation was creating for military planners, see Sherry, op cit, note 21; and Rosenberg, op cit, note 21.

Brody David , Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the 20th Century Struggle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), chapter 5. See also Blum, op cit, note 24, pp. 475–6. Also on concerns over a renewed depression after the war, see Collins, op cit, note 11, Rosenof, op cit, note 10, Part II, and George Lipsitz, Class and Culture in Cold War America (South Hadley, MA: J.F. Bergin, 1982), pp. 120–121. Also on the strikes, and the anti-labor reaction which they provoked not only in business circles but also in rural and small-town America, see Boylan, op cit, note 13, chapter 3 and p. 50, notes 10–13.

On the development of organized labor's strategy during and at the end of the war, see Brody , ibid, pp. 175–82, and on the GM strike and the company's precent-setting negative response, 183ff. On the Truman Administration's response to the strike, see Boylan, op cit, note 13, pp. 37–39.

For the most recent account of the history of the Full Employment Bill, including the role of the US Chamber of Commerce in writing the more conservative House version, which eventually became law, see Collins, op cit., note 11. Also Stephen Kemp Bailey, Congress Makes a Law (New York, 1964). Truman withdrew Administration support for the original version of the bill in the midst of floor debate.

On the dramatic events surrounding the Vice-Presidential nomination at the 1944 Democratic Party Convention, see Markowitz, op cit, note 13, chapter 3. Wallace virtually assured opposition to his nomination from Southern delegates, if it was not already certain by insisting in his speech: “The future belongs to those who go down the line unswervingly for the liberal principles of both political and economic democracy, regardless of race, color or religion. The poll tax must go. Equal educational opportunities must come. The future must bring equal wages for equal work regardless of sex and race.” See his address in Congressional Record, 78 Congress, 2 Session, p. A3490.

On the loyalty issue and the intensification of the domestic anticommunist movement at the end of the war, see Alan D. Harper, The Politics of Loyalty: The White House and the Communist Issue, 1946–1952 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1969), chapter 3; Lawrence S. Wittner, Cold War America: From Hiroshima to Watergate (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), chapter 4; Boylan, op cit, note 13, pp. 35, 41, 44–45, 135ff.; Levenstein, op cit, note 12, chapter 12; and Earl Latham, The Communist Controversy in Washington: From the New Deal to McCarthy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966). On the activity of communists in government and labor unions in the thirties and during the war, see Latham, chapters 3–7: Levenstein, op cit, note 12, chapters 1–2 and 6–9; and Boylan, op cit, note 13, pp. 75–77. On anticommunist investigations by Congressional committees and executive agencies during this same period, with some indication of the antiNew Deal motives of the investigators, see Robert K. Carr, The House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1945–1950 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1952), chapter 1; Levenstein, op cit, note 12, chapters 4–5; Latham, ibid, pp. 28–38, 363–65, 381–86; and references in note 12.

See material from the operations of the Loyalty Review Board in Harper, op cit., note 33; e.g. p. 50, where “favoring peace and civil liberties” was taken as evidence by an informer that a government employee was advocating the Communist Party line.

Kennan's cable was classified until 1971. Perhaps for that reason, most accounts of the origins of the Cold War have bypassed the telegram and focused on Kennan's Mr “X” article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 25, July 1947, pp. 566–582, which appeared too late to influence the decisive shift in American policymaking that is described here. In 1977, however, Daniel Yergin's analysis highlighted the significance of the telegram, op cit, note 2, pp. 168–71. The full text of the cable is reprinted in Thomas H. Etzold and John Lewis Gaddis (editors), Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), pp. 50–63. Kennan's views were actually formulated years before and had their roots in what Yergin calls “the Riga axioms,” Lloyd C. Gardner, Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy, 1941–49 (Chicago: Quadrangle 1970), chapter 10, pp. 279–80, 288–90. This tends to confirm what is suggested by the rhetorical strategy of the telegram: Kennan was not basing his judgments on an examination of Soviet behavior in the context of events during and after the war. Rather, he assumed that Soviet behavior was predetermined and thus not responsive to the actions of other nations. This was the fundamental tenet of the “Riga axioms” as they were developed after the Bolshevik Revolution and used as the basis for US policy of nonrecognition of the new regime. For example: “Their aim is world-wide revolution … Their doctrines aim at the destruction of all governments as now constituted” (quoted by Yergin, p. 19, from DeWitt Clinton Poole, who worked on Russian affairs in the State Department in 1919). For Kennan and others sharing this outlook, Soviet behavior would remain fixed and frozen in this mold for as long as the regime lasted. After diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union in 1933, and partly as a consequence of the new factors and personalities that were brought into US policy-making with the New Deal and the second world war, the “Riga axioms” and those who professed them were partially shunted aside. For a variety of reasons that have been described here, Kennan's telegram came at the right moment to serve as a crucial resource for the reassertion of the “Riga axioms.” The immediate occasion prompting the telegram was a speech by Stalin on February 9, 1946, which caused alarm in the West. Kennan was asked by officials in the State Department to provide an explanation. For a description and interpretation of Stalin's speech, see Yergin, op cit, note 2, pp. 166–67; see also the comments by Henry Wallace in note 37 below.

E.g., “The problem of Russian capabilities and intentions is so complex, and the unknowns are so numerous, that it is impossible to grasp the situation and describe it in a set of coherent and well-established conclusions,” Gerald T. Robinson, Chief, Research and Intelligence, State Department, December 10, 1945, Yergin, op cit, note 2, p. 138. For the general ambivalence, confusion and contradictions in US policy and pronouncements with respect to Russia in the period from September through December 1945, see Yergin, op cit, note 2, chapters 5 and 6, and also DePorte, op cit, note 3, chapter 6. For the uncertainty surrounding analysis of Russian intentions and capabilities in this period, see Leffler, op cit, note 21, pp. 357, 359–362, 365 and note 53, and Yergin, op cit, note 2, pp. 165–66.

E.g., at the London Foreign Ministers Conference in September 1945, the Russians made a bid for recognition of their supremacy of influence (and/or control) in the Balkans, especially with respect to Rumania and Bulgaria. The US delegation's Eastern European specialists strenuously urged Secretary Byrnes to resist this Soviet “trap,” but this put Byrnes in the awkward position of denying to Russia on its borders the kind of influence (and/or control) that the United States seemed at that moment to be claiming over Japan and islands in the Pacific and that Russia had conceded to the United States and Great Britain over Italy and to the latter over Greece. Byrnes appears to have been aware of the apparent contradiction, Yergin, op cit, note 2, pp. 131–32 and Messer, op cit., note 21. For US policy-makers' attitude about US supremacy in the Western Hemisphere at the time, see Leffler, op cit, note 21, p. 354. Similarly, Stalin's speech of February 9, 1946—the one that indirectly led to the Long Telegram—was interpreted by some as a reversion to Stalin's 1928 policy of isolation as well as representing a commitment to remilitarization. However, to someone like Wallace, who was inclined to interpret Soviet behavior in the context of recent US behavior and as a response to that behavior, Stalin's speech assumed a different significance. “I told him [William Bullitt, former Ambassador to Russia] that I thought this [speech] was accounted for in some measure by the fact that it was obvious to Stalin that our military was getting ready for war with Russia; that they were setting up bases all the way from Greenland, Iceland, northern Canada, and Alaska to Okinawa, with Russia in mind. I said that Stalin obviously knew what these bases meant and also knew the attitude of many of our people through our press. We were challenging him and his speech was taking up the challenge,” Blum, op cit, note 24, pp. 547, 549–50. These were the kinds of contextual interpretation of Soviet behavior that Kennan attempted to circumvent and make irrelevant in his telegram.

Rosenberg , op cit, note 21, p. 64; Leffler, op cit, note 21, pp. 350–354; and Sherry, op cit, note 21, p. 204.

Frustrated at the direction of US policy and the lack of attention to his views, Kennan mentioned to colleagues in January 1946 that he was considering resigning soon from the Foreign Service, see Wright C. Ben , “Mr. ‘X’ and Containment,” Slavic Review, Vol. 35, March 1976, p. 12.

The enthusiastic response to the telegram, including the news leak, is described by Yergin, op cit, note 2, pp. 170–71.

For the confused state of public opinion on the issue of Soviet-American relations, the way officials were eventually able to “clarify” the situation once they had arrived at consensus themselves, see the interesting material in Yergin, op cit, note 2, p. 171ff.

The following analysis relies heavily on material contained in the important article by Leffler, op cit, note 21, whose research is based on massive numbers of recently declassified documents (see p. 347, note 5). The documents, as reported by Leffler, indicate a significant shift in the statements of policy-makers in the spring and summer after the arrival of the telegram. Leffler, however, does not attribute this shift to the telegram. Instead, he explains the shift in terms of growing concern over “economic and political conditions throughout Europe and Asia” and the opportunity which these conditions created for “communists [to] take power, even without direct Russian intervention …” (pp. 363, 365). It is worth noting that the telegram itself, by emphasizing Soviet subversive methods of expansion, may have helped to mobilize and justify a US response to the political and economic conditions in Europe and Asia.

E.g. in the summer of 1945, Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy finally overruled the senior member of the Joint Strategic Survey Committee who had advised not to build an airbase in Iceland because it would frighten the Russians. McCloy charged that the official, General S.D. Embrick, had “a rather restricted concept of what is necessary for national defense,” ibid, p. 352.

Ibid, p. 357. The first decision was made in April, the second in June 1945. For evidence that civilian officials were influenced by similar concerns, see Yergin, op cit, note 2, pp. 100–105, 109–110, 114, 117–119, 129, and chapter 6.

Ibid, p. 359. In October 1945, the Joint Intelligence Staff predicted that the Soviet Union would seek to avoid war for five to ten years. Despite confrontation over the Soviet troops remaining in Iran in April 1946 and the concern over a communist uprising in France in May, military intelligence continued throughout 1946 to believe that the Soviet Union did not want war, was not preparing for war and would avoid any steps, such as supporting a coup, which might bring on a war.

Ibid, p. 359. The CIA added that the Soviets would prefer to gain hegemony by political and economic means.

The Bohlen quotation is from Yergin, op cit, note 2, p. 165.

Leffler, op cit, note 21, p. 365. It must be emphasized that many officials, high and low, didn't believe in the possibility of working out agreements with the Soviets and were convinced they wanted world domination. The argument here merely insists that opinion was divided and confused, and policy-making was therefore inhibited.

See Leffler's ‘Reply’ in the same issue, op cit, note 21, p. 396.

Ibid, p. 365.

Ibid, p. 361. For assessment of Soviet economic weakness, see p. 362. In his comments on Leffler's article, John Lewis Gaddis raised the following objection: “Leffler fails to distinguish clearly enough, in my view, between the Russian military threat to North America, which he correctly says no one took very seriously at the time, and the possibility that the Red Army might overrun Western Europe. … Although intelligence reports discounted the probability of a deliberate attack in Europe, they by no means disregarded the possibility of hostilities beginning as the result of accident or misperception. And, given Soviet conventional force superiority at that time, the Russians would have had the capability to overrun most of Western Europe in a matter of weeks, a fact all American war plans during this period took for granted,” “Comments,” American Historical Review, Vol. 89, No. 2, April 1984, p. 384. With respect to Eurasia, however, Leffler had noted that: “Despite Soviet superiority in manpower, General Eisenhower and Admiral Forest E. Sherman doubted that Russia could mount a surprise attack, and General Lincoln, Admiral Cato Glover, and Secretaries Patterson and Forrestal believed that Soviet forces would encounter acute logistical problems in trying to overrun Eurasia—especially in the Near East, Spain, and Italy (p. 361). As for war occurring through accident or misperception, see “Reply,” pp. 396–97, where it is noted that, because of the initiatives the United States was taking to rebuild Western Europe in 1948, there was an increased likelihood of war. However: “When American officials talked about war arising out of a miscalculation … they meant that they might underestimate the Soviet perception of threat engendered by American actions or that the Soviets might underestimate the West's determination to carry out its goals even if it meant war,” see pp. 373–374. In other words, it was the outlook and actions of US policy-makers after the “Long Telegram” had worked its effects that altered the calculations of the likelihood of accidental war.

The failure to make such proposals, especially with respect to a settlement of the German problem, was the basis of Walter Lippmann's criticism of US foreign policy in 1946 and 1947. See his “A Year of Peacemaking,” Atlantic Monthly, December 1946, and The Cold War (New York: Harper & Bros., 1947), pp. 60–62; and comments below.

Historians have frequently noted that US policy-makers attitudes towards the Soviet Union “crystallized” and “hardened” in early 1946. See, for example, Gaddis John Lewis , The United States and the Origins of the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972); Yergin, op cit, note 2, pp. 192, 217, 219–220, chapters 9 and 10; Hamby, op cit, note 13, p. 118. For the most detailed documentation of this shift, however, see Leffler, op cit, note 21, pp. 366–69.

Leffler , op cit, note 21, p. 366.

Ibid, p. 369.

On decline of studies of Soviet intentions, ibid, p. 368, note 59; on withdrawal of the most thoughtful earlier studies, p. 367, note 56; on the deletion of information concerning Soviet weakness, p. 369; on pressure on Byrnes, p. 370; see also Yergin, op cit, note 2, pp. 183–186; on influence of the military in drafting Baruch Plan, p. 371; see also Barton J. Bernstein, “Quest for Security,” op cit, note 26, pp. 1033–44; and Herken, op cit, note 21.

The full memorandum is in the Harry S. Truman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri. The conclusions of the memo are reprinted in Etzold and Gaddis, op cit, note 35, pp. 64–71. Truman received the full report on September 24. Given Kennan's frequent claim that his views as expressed in the “Long Telegram” and Mr “X” article were misinterpreted, especially with respect to the militarization and universalization of containment, it is worth noting his comments on the summary conclusions of the report. In response to questions from George Elsey on September 13—“Have we omitted any impt. element of the Report? Was tone of report o.k.? miscellaneous suggestions?”—Kennan replied in writing, “I think the general tone is excellent and I have no fault to find with it.” He offered no substantive criticism in the six-page reply. (I am grateful to Bart Bernstein for calling this correspondence to my attention and sending a copy of it. The originals are in the George Elsey Files, Papers of Harry S. Truman, Harry S. Truman Library, 13 February and 16 February.).

Quoted in Yergin, op cit, note 2, p. 244. The questionnaire was sent to the Secretaries of State, War, Navy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Attorney General, the Director of Central Intelligence, and other Administration officials. The background to the preparation of the memorandum is discussed in Yergin, op cit, note 2, pp. 234, 241–242. The individual responses from the State and War Departments are also discussed (pp. 242–44). These indicate quite clearly how the interpretive framework of the Long Telegram was being used to justify a variety of institutional ambitions and a new conception of American national security. For the State Department, according to Yergin, the local dimensions of any question were now secondary to the grand scheme of incipient East-West conflict. The Department's policy guide said, “We must conduct a global policy and not expect to advance our interests by treating each question on its apparent merits as it arises.” According to Chester Nimitz, Chief of Naval Operations, Soviet naval activity—actual or potential, whether it was in the Arctic or Pacific oceans, in the Baltic, Black, or Mediterranean seas—threatened US security. The Russians, he said, were preparing for such ventures as attempting “to neutralize” Britain by blockade, bombardment and invasion, and were aiming to launch submarine raids against US coastal cities. As a response, the Navy recommended the development of major US naval presences in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The War Department insisted that the Russians fully expected and even wanted a war, and held the Soviet Union responsible for most of the world's troubles. The United States needed to be ready for imminent Russian “use of armed forces on a global scale. Security preparations in light of this estimate must be both political and military.”.

These examples are taken from Yergin, op cit., note 2, pp. 191, 212–13, 226, 243–44; and Leffler, op cit, note 21, pp. 367–68.

Leffler, op cit, note 21, pp. 367–68, 394–96.

Ibid, p. 368.

Yergin , op cit, note 2, pp. 279–82, 288–89, 295.

Ibid, pp. 243–44; and Leffler, op cit, note 21, pp. 368–69.

When “containment” was broached in public for the first time with Kennan's “Mr X” article, Lippmann responded in The Cold War (1947): “At the root of Mr X's philosophy about Russian-American relations and underlying all the ideas of the Truman Doctrine there is a disbelief in the possibility of a settlement of the issues raised by this war. Having observed, I believe quite correctly, that we cannot expect ‘to enjoy political intimacy with the Soviet regime,’ and that we must ‘regard the Soviet Union as a rival, not a partner in the political arena,’ and that ‘there can be no appeal to common purposes,’ Mr X has reached the conclusion that all we do is to ‘contain’ Russia until Russia changes, ceases to be our rival, and becomes our partner. The conclusion is, it seems to me, quite unwarranted. The history of diplomacy is the history of relations among rival powers, which did not enjoy political intimacy, and did not respond to appeals to common purposes. Nevertheless, there have been settlements. … A genuine policy would, therefore, have as its paramount objective a settlement which brought about the evacuation of Europe. … The communists will continue to be communists. The Russians will continue to be Russians. But if the Red Army is in Russia, and not on the Elbe, the power of the Russian communists and the power of the Russian imperialists to realize their ambitions will have been reduced decisively” (pp. 60–62). But so would US power have been reduced. For a contemporary statement by an East European of a similar settlement policy, see George Konrad, Antipolitics (New York: Holt and Company, 1984).

Yergin , op cit, note 2, p. 245.

Markowitz , op cit, note 12, pp. 176–181. Wallace's most strenuous effort of this kind came in the form of a long letter to Truman on July 23, reprinted in Blum, op cit, note 24, pp. 589–603. It included a critique of the Baruch plan for international control of atomic energy along lines that Stimson had already argued the previous September.

Ibid, pp. 181–191; Yergin, op cit, note 2, pp. 245–55. Wallace's speech at Madison Square Garden, “Peace—and How to Get Peace,” is reprinted in Filene, op cit, note 15, pp. 167–173. It should be noted that the speech was on September 12, 12 days before the Clifford memo was presented to Truman, but not before the consensus reflected in the memo had been achieved. In the speech, Wallace attempted to maintain a balanced position. Thus: “Russia must be convinced that we are not planning for war against her, and we must be certain that Russia is not carrying on territorial expansion or world domination through native Communists faithfully following every twist and turn in the Moscow party line.” Or: “… we should recognize that we have no more business in the (political) affairs of Eastern Europe than Russia has in the (political) affairs of Latin America, Western Europe and the United States … [W]hether we like it or not, the Russians will try to socialize their sphere of influence just as we try to democratize our sphere of influence.” Or: “… we must insist on an open door for trade throughout the world. There will always be ideological conflict—but that is no reason why diplomats cannot work out a basis for both systems to live safely in the world side by side.” Nevertheless, from within the policy-making consensus, the speech was now heard as appeasement.

An example of the ambiguity from which citizens needed to be rescued is contained in a letter which John Foster Dulles received in September 1946 from members of the Committee on Foreign Relations in Detroit, an affiliate of the Council on Foreign Relations. They were inviting Dulles to help clarify the situation because “frankly we are pretty much at sea. Two or three times after rather extended discussions with well-informed discussion leaders we have come to the conclusion that the United States and Russia can ‘get along’ and live in the same world, enjoying a reasonable amount of peace and harmony. We concluded also that Russia only wants to secure her borders, is internally unprepared for another war, and consequently doesn't want one, and has no intention of grabbing new territory, or trying to evangelize the world toward communism. These are things our committee has believed but we are becoming disillusioned and would like to have someone who knows the answers to help us straighten our thinking,” quoted in Yergin, op cit, note 2, p. 172.

The Wilson quote may be found in Brody, op cit, note 29, p. 181. The Chamber of Commerce campaign is described in I.F. Stone, The Truman Era (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1953), pp. 80–86. Suggestive material on the politics of Southern racism in this period—exacerbated by a 1944 Supreme Court decision outlawing white primaries—is in Boylan, op cit, note 13, pp. 85–88. On the use of anticommunism by Republicans and Southern Democrats in Congress after the 1946 elections, see Athan Theoharis, Seeds of Repression: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of McCarthyism (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971); and “The Escalation of the Loyalty Program,” in Barton J. Bernstein, editor, op cit., note 21, and on this and the US Catholics, see also Wittner, op cit, note 33, chapter 4, p. 88ff.

For a discussion of the Administration's political strategy with respect to the veto, as well as the consequences of the Act, see Steinberg Peter , The Great “Red Menace”: United States Prosecution of American Communists, 1947–1952 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), p. 44ff., and also Wittner, op cit, note 33, p. 48 and Levenstein, op cit, note 12; on the setting up of the loyalty program, see Yergin, op cit, note 2, p. 284ff; and the works of Harper, op cit, note 33; Latham, op cit, note 33, and Theoharis, ibid..

Lippmann , The Cold War, op cit, note 52, p. 39: “I am contending that the American diplomatic effort should be concentrated on the problem created by the armistice—which is on how the continent of Europe can be evacuated by the three non-European armies which are now inside Europe. … It is to the Red Army in Europe, therefore, and not to ideologies, elections, forms of government, to socialism, to communism, to free enterprise, that a correctly conceived and soundly planned policy should be directed.” On how difficult and perhaps unwise such a solution might have been, see the thoughtful discussion by DePorte, op cit, note 3, chapter 8. For a recent discussion of the German problem in connection with the development of the Marshall Plan, see Charles L. Mee, Jr, The Marshall Plan: the Launching of the Pax Americana (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984).

By the spring of 1947, Kennan was expressing concern that the public reaction had gone too far in the direction of a “hysterical sort of anti-communism,” which he said he “deplored.” See Yergin, op cit, note 2, p. 284. On the relatively contained character of domestic anticommunism before 1946, see the judgment of Theoharis, op cit, note 69, pp. 7–8.

Etzold Gaddis , op cit, note 35, p. 392. NSC-68 was classified until 1975. Officially titled as “United States Objectives and Programs for National Security,” it has been described as “the most elaborate effort made by United States officials during the early Cold War years to integrate political, economic, and military considerations into a comprehensive statement of national security policy,” Etzold and Gaddis, p. 383. Authored by a small, special State and Defense Department study group headed by Paul Nitze, who replaced Kennan as head of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department in January 1950, NSC-68 was an attempt to overcome the Truman-imposed anti-inflation budget constraints and achieve the extensive military build-up called for in the Clifford memo. The outbreak of the Korean War became the occasion for achieving these objectives. For useful discussions of NSC-68, see Paul Y. Hammond, “NSC-68: Prologue to Rearmament,” in Warner R. Schilling, Paul Y. Hammond, and Glen H. Snyder, Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962); and Jerry W. Sanders, Peddlers of Crisis: The Committee on the Present Danger and the Politics of Containment (Boston: South End Press, 1983), chapter 1. See also Leffler, op cit, note 21, pp. 373–378, on the now perceived need for greater military capabilities given the extensive overseas commitments that the United States was making.

For discussions of this response, see DePorte, op cit, note 3, pp. 124–141, and Mee, op cit, note 71. DePorte notes: “The planners of the proposal [i.e. the Marshall Plan] tried to avoid giving the impression, which they believed was a fault of the Truman Doctrine, that it was crudely military and ideological and simply an instrument of anticommunism. … Certainly there was more in the Marshall proposal than containment. The economic propserity and political stability of Western Europe were important to the United States for more than one reason. But it was clear to the public on both sides of the Atlantic, from the context and the follow-up, that the new policy, like the Truman Doctrine, was part of the emerging response to what was perceived as a multiple Soviet and Communist threat. It is not likely that Congress would have approved the program on any other basis. … Though the American offer was nominally open to the Soviet Union as to other European countries, there could have been little expectation that would join in the required cooperative response or, if it did, that the program would have received congressional and public support in the United States. As it turned out the Russians did refuse, and forced their satellites to do so, so that the onus of the division of Europe fell on them” (p. 135).

DePorte , op cit, note 3, pp. 119–21. In the background was also the failure of the wartime Allies at the Moscow Conference in December 1946 to define a common policy for the future of Germany.

Mee , op cit, note 71, pp. 236–45.

DePorte , op cit, note 3, pp. 152–3, 139–41.

E.g. ibid, chapters 6 and 7; and Yergin, op cit, note 2, p. 324ff.

Between 1945 and 1947, the percentage of the public perceiving Russia as “aggressive” rose from 38 to 66 percent, Yergin, op cit, note 2, p. 285. A Gallup poll in October 1947 reported that 76 percent of the nation thought Russia was “out to rule the world” (cited by Wittner, op cit, note 33, p. 47). By the presidential election of 1948, Henry Wallace, running as a peace candidate on a third-party ticket (the Progressive Party), received only 2.37 percent of the total ballots and more than 4 percent only in New York and California. For a discussion of his campaign, see Markowitz, op cit, note 12, chapter 8, and Curtis D. MacDougall, Gideon's Army (New York: Marzani & Munsell, 1965), 3 vols.

Yergin , op cit, note 2, pp. 390, 402–3 and note 14, p. 488, with references to Kennan's Memoirs. NSC-68 regarded diplomacy, i.e., “a sound negotiating position,” primarily as a “tactic,” i.e., “an essential element in the ideological conflict,” to be pursued in conjunction with a military build-up. Thus: “For some time after a decision to build up strength, any offer of, or attempt at, negotiation of a general settlement along the lines of the Berkeley speech by the Secretary of State could be only a tactic. Nevertheless, concurrently with a decision and a start on building up the strength of the free world, it may be desirable to pursue this tactic both to gain public support for the program and to minimize the immediate risk of war,” Etzold and Gaddis, op cit, note 35, pp. 423–424; see also pp. 422, 424–426, 429, 432, 434.

This material is taken from The Defense Monitor, Vol. IX, No. 1, 1982. See the extensive discussion as well as the explanation of “influence” and its measurement. The 12 countries in which the Soviet Union was judged to have “significant” influence in 1982 were: Afghanistan, Angola, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Congo, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, East Germany, Hungary, Laos, Libya, Mongolia, Mozambique, Poland, Romania, Syria, Yemen (Aden), and Vietnam. The 16 countries in which the Soviet Union was judged to have had significant influence in the past were: Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Iraq, North Korea, Mali, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen (Sana), and Yugoslavia. From 1945 to 1980, the number of countries in the world more than doubled (from about 74 to 155). Almost all the new countries were former colonies of Western powers. On the basis of the Kennan-Clifford script, one might have expected far greater Soviet success.

The difficult case, of course, is Western Europe. Two points are relevant to the present argument: (a) US intelligence analysts did not believe the Soviet Union posed a military threat to Western Europe after the war. Nor did it believe the Soviet Union was encouraging or supporting indigenous communist uprisings or armed takeovers in countries considered to be within the Western sphere of influence, such as France or Greece; and (b) without US intervention, it seems likely that communist and socialist parties would have acquired greater influence, and the tone and substance of politics might well have shifted leftward. However, given the difficulty that the Soviet Union has had in getting its way even in impoverished African countries that it has assisted, it seems unlikely that any Western European country would have capitulated to Soviet control or extensive influence. Once the United States committed itself to intervention, however, the Soviet military threat was bound to grow greater. For example: “In July 1947, intelligence analysts in the War Department maintained that the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan had resulted in a more aggressive Soviet attitude toward the United States and had intensified tensions. ‘These tensions have caused a sharper line of demarcation between West and East tending to magnify the significance of conflicting points of view, and reducing the possibility of agreement on any point.’ Intelligence officers understood that the Soviets would perceive American efforts to build strategic highways, construct airfields, and transfer fighter bombers to Turkey as a threat to Soviet security and to the oilfields in the Caucasus. … Intelligence analysts also recognized that the Soviets would view the Marshall Plan as a threat to Soviet control in Eastern Europe as well as a death-knell to communist attempts to capture power peacefully in Western Europe. … ‘The whole Berlin crisis,’ army planners informed Eisenhower, ‘has arisen as a result of … actions on the part of the Western powers,’” Leffler, op cit, note 21, pp. 373, 374.

E.g. Thompson W. Scott (editor), From Weakness to Strength: National Security in the 1980s (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1980). The volume presents the foreign policies and programs to be pursued by the Reagan Administration in its first term.

E.g. see the address of Jean Kirkpatrick to the Republican National Convention, August 20, 1984, reprinted in the next day's New York Times..

This is a function, in part, of “worst case analysis.” For how this works in practice, see York Herbert F. , “A Personal View of the Arms Race,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 26, March 1970, pp. 27–31.

On the decision to move bases closer to the Soviet Union, see Leffler, op cit, note 21, p. 372. On Wohlstetter, see Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), pp. 90–94, 97–110, 117–124, and chapter 8.

See Kaplan , ibid, and also Herken, Counsels of War, op cit, note 24, chapters 12 and 13.

On the “New Look” and “Massive Retaliation,” see Aliano Richard A. , American Defense Policy from Eisenhower to Kennedy: The Politics of Changing Military Requirements, 1957–1961 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1975), chapter 2.

On the McNamara slowdown and the McNamara build-up, see Kaplan , op cit, note 86, chapters 22–23; for Kissinger-Nixon and “detente”, see Sanders, op cit, pp. 137–145 and chapter 5, and John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Reappraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), chapters 9 and 10.

The classic statement of the charge is Taylor Maxwell D. , The Uncertain Trumpet (New York: Harper, 1959). See also Aliano, op cit, note 88, pp. 107ff; and Kaplan, op cit, note 86, pp. 196ff, 328ff.

Ball Desmond , Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile Program of the Kennedy Administration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); and also the discussions in Aliano, Kaplan and Herken.

Sanders , op cit, Herken, op cit, note 12, chapters 20–27; Gaddis, op cit, chapter 11, who concludes his study with the thought: “There would appear, in all of this, to be a stronger connection between domestic politics and national security policy than has been generally realized. … [P]olitical campaigns more often than changing circumstances bring about shifts in official orthodoxies …,” pp. 355–56.

For the “shrinking effect” of anticommunism and the coming of the Cold War on US liberals, see Wittner, op cit, note 33, chapters 2–5. The formation of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) in January of 1947 and the publication of Arthur Schlesinger's The Vital Center (1949) provide useful markers of the change.

Indeed, it could be argued that the Americans borrowed this way of talking about the behavior of nations from the Bolsheviks, who had previously learned it themselves from the West.

In the same news report quoting Georgi Arbatov, op cit, note 1, Time also printed a map of the world showing 19 recent Soviet peace initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East and Persian Gulf, Asia, Afghanistan and Europe. For balance, however, the magazine also quoted a warning from former President Richard Nixon's new book, 1999: “Under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union's foreign policy has been more skillful and subtle than ever before. But it has been more aggressive, not less.”.