President Truman & Cold War Policy

President Harry S. Truman's 1949 Inaugural Address and National Security Council Directive 68, taken together, comprise the basic notions of the authors and of the nation with respect to the world economy as the Cold War began to intensify. In the aftermath of World War II, that Cold War was the dark backdrop to the messages of both authors, with the new postwar world emerging as a strategic, economic, ideological and military battleground between the superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union.

Each of the four basic points of Truman's speech focus directly or indirectly on the perceived threat of the Soviet Union. Truman emphasizes the commitment of the U.S. to helping others recover economically from the ravages of World War II, but he ignores the fact that aside from Germany, perhaps the Soviet Union suffered more in every way than any other nation. The Soviets, however, were perceived by American leaders as a threat, not as a nation to be sent aid, as were European nations. Truman mentions the United Nations, but it was largely a symbolic world body with little power of enforcing decisions. Truman mentioned the U.N. in part because it allowed him to suggest that the postwar conflict was between the "good" nations of the U.N. against the "bad" Communist nations.

In reality, the United States throughout the 1950s (Vietnam, Guatemala, Iran) would pursue not U.N.-backed measures for peace and progress, but covert, self-serving, unilateral actions which did ev

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sm and socialism? Both pursued goals which they saw as expressions of their self-interest. Both were willing to do whatever they needed to do to bring about the desired results. Both hated and feared the other side, and both had to and did manipulate their own people with propaganda. LaFeber writes that the Soviet Union was far from being a threat to the United States after the war. The Soviets had suffered far more than the United States in the war. They were wounded in every sense, especially economically. Truman was guided far more by economic desires than by fear of any military threat from the Soviet Union. The concern with the takeover of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union, and the loss of Third World nations to the Soviets, was more a matter of economics than liberty or democracy. LaFeber says Truman made this clear: The President frankly declared that if the expansion of state-controlled economies (such as the communists') was not stopped, and an open world marketplace not restored for private businessmen, depression would occur and the government would have to intervene massively in the society (LaFeber 54). What Truman was saying was that liberty and democracy depended on capitalism. Economics became the stated pu

Category: History - P