Transcript Cold War - Triton College

Cold War
 George Kennan and “The Long Telegram”
Charge d'affaires Moscow 1944-46 22 February
1946
Response to State Department
Foundation of US Government “Containment” policy
Cold War

War’s End
Immediate Soviet expansion
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Poland
Czechoslovakia
Rumania
Yugoslavia*
Albania
Bulgaria
Hungary
East Germany
“Warsaw Pact”
Cold War
Cold War

FDR vision of post-war peace
Four global policemen
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US
Britain
USSR
People’s Republic of China
Untenable

US leadership
Must resist Soviet expansion
Justification
Traditional “Balance of Power”
Cold War
 To set a US policy visa-vis the USSR
Root causes of soviet behavior
– Had US adequately communicated pacific intent?
– Was USSR rejecting postwar cooperation?
– Was US/USSR friendship impossible?
Kennan’s “Long Telegram” provided an intellectual
framework for US/Soviet policy
Cold War
 Kennan’s analysis
US not culpable for Soviet behavior
Cause deeply rooted in
– Russian tradition
– Soviet ideology
From time immemorial Russia under the Tzars
sought
– Poland
– Bulgaria
– Warm water port
Historic sense of insecurity
Cold War
 Stalin a “true believer”
Capitalist west irrevocably hostile
“In this [communist] dogma, with its basic altruism of purpose,
they found justification for their instinctive fear of the outside
world, for the dictatorship without which they did not know
how to rule, for cruelties they did not dare not to inflict, for
sacrifices they felt bound to demand.... Without it they would
stand before history, at best, as only the last of that long
succession of cruel and wasteful Russian rulers who have
relentlessly forced [their] country on to ever new heights of
military power in order to guarantee external security of their
internally weak regimes.…”
Cold War
America must prepare for a long fight
 Goals/philosophies of US-USSR irreconcilable
 Clark Clifford

Truman advisor
General agreement
"The main deterrent to Soviet attack on the United States, or
to attack on areas of the world which are vital to our security,
will be the military power of this country."
Cold War

Global US security mission
Includes “all democratic countries which are in any way
menaced or endangered by the U.S.S.R.“
Interpretation of “democratic countries”
– Western Europe only?
– Mideast?
– Southeast Asia?
Clifford: Containment nontraditional policy
Soviet-US conflict not due to differing national interests
– Negotiable
– Due to moral failings of Soviet system/leadership
Cold War
 Clifford: small ruling clique in USSR to blame
 Significant Soviet change of heart +
 New Soviet leadership=
 US friendship
 At some point the “new leadership in USSR
"work out with us a fair and equitable settlement
when they realize that we are too strong to be
beaten and too determined to be frightened."
Cold War
 No provision for general negotiation process
 No “end game”
 So long as the Soviet Union maintained its
ideology, negotiations were treated as pointless
 Bottom line: America now held the conceptual
framework to justify political cal and military
resistance to Soviet expansionism
Cold War
 Truman “containment”
Greece
– Beset w/ communist guerillas aided through
Yugoslavia/Bulgaria
– USSR made territorial demands against Turkey, along
with a request for Soviet bases in the Straits
– Britain protected but in late 1946 could no longer do so
– Atlee request US to take over
– Truman willing but had to convince Republican house
Cold War

Sec. State Dean Acheson
" Acheson boldly presented the group with visions of a bleak
future in which the forces of communism stood to gain the
upper hand: "Only two great powers remained in the world . .
. [the] United States and the Soviet Union. We had arrived at
a situation unparalleled since ancient times. Not since Rome
and Carthage had there been such a polarization of power on
this earth. . . . For the United States to take steps to
strengthen countries threatened with Soviet aggression or
communist subversion . . . was to protect the security of the
United States - it was to protect freedom itself "
Cold War
Greek-Turkish aid program portrayed as part of the
global struggle between democracy and dictatorship
 12 March 1947 Truman Doctrine

“…to support free peoples who are resisting attempted
subjugation, by armed minorities or by outside pressures."
Traditional Wilsonian terms of a struggle between two ways
of life
America had thrown down the moral gauntlet
the kind of realpoliltik Stalin understood would be forever at
an end
Bargaining over reciprocal concessions would be out of the
question
Cold War

Criticism at both ends of political spectrum
America was defending countries that, however important,
were morally unworthy
America was committing itself to the defense of societies
that, whether free or not, were not vital to American security

5 June 1947 Marshall Plan
committed America to the task of eradicating the social and
economic conditions that tempted aggression
America would aid European recovery
Restore the world economy and to nurture free institutions
Persuasive policy
Cold War

George Kennan "The Sources of Soviet Conduct“
Political Affairs July 1947 “X”
Expanded version of “Long Telegram”
Hostility to the democracies was inherent in the Soviet
domestic structure
Would prove impervious to conciliatory Western policies
Tension with the outside world was inherent in the very
nature of communist philosophy and in the way the Soviet
system was being run domestically
Cold War
Main concern of Soviet policy was "to make sure that it
has filled every nook and cranny available to it in the
basin of world power."
 The way to defeat Soviet strategy was by "a policy of
firm containment, designed to confront the Russians
with unalterable counterforce at every point where they
show signs of encroaching upon the interests of a
peaceful and stable world."

Cold War
Soviet Russia lacked legitimacy in its transfer of power
 Sooner or later counter claims would emerge
 "For the membership at large has been exercised only
in the practices of iron discipline and obedience and not
in the arts of compromise and accommodation.... lf,
consequently, anything were ever to occur to disrupt the
unity and efficacy of the party as a political instrument,
Soviet Russia might be changed overnight from one of
the strongest to one of the weakest arid most pitiable of
national societies."

Cold War
The mechanism: Containment
 he had charged America with combating Soviet
pressures for the indefinite future all around a vast
periphery that embraced the widely differing
circumstances of Asia, the middle East and Europe. The
Kremlin was, moreover, free to select its point of attack,
presumably only where it calculated it would have the
greatest advantage. Henry Kissinger

Cold War
INGREDIENTS OF CONTAINMENT
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Committed US to seemingly endless struggle
Initiative USSR’s
Sphere of influence
No negotiations
 Critical time
 Atomic monopoly
– Premise of Containment - positions of strength had yet to be built
– Cold War became both militarized and imbued with an inaccurate
impression of the West's relative weakness.
Cold War
Redemption of the Soviet Union became the ultimate
goal of policy
 Stability could emerge only after redemption
 Issue of Soviet-American relations is in essence a test
of the overall worth of the United States as a nation
among nations


“The thoughtful observer of Russian-American relations will find no cause for
complaint in the Kremlin's challenge to American society. He will rather
experience a certain gratitude to a providence which, by providing the
American people with this implacable challenge, has made their entire security
as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the
responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended
them to bear.” Kissinger
Cold War
 Task of containment so complex that America
would nearly tear itself apart trying to fulfill it
 Essentially passive with respect to diplomacy
with the Soviet Union
 Evoked creativity when it came to building
"positions of strength" in the military and
economic realms
Cold War

In containment were merged lessons derived from the
two most important American experiences of the
previous generation
From the New Deal came the belief that threats to political
stability arise primarily from gaps between economic and
social expectations and reality (Marshall Plan)
From WWII America learned that the best protection against
aggression is having overwhelming power and the
willingness to use it (NATO)
Cold War
 Critiques
Walter Lippmann: containment policy led to
psychological and geopolitical overextension while
draining American resources. Result: economic
exhaustion
Winston Churchill: objected to the postponement of
negotiations until after positions of strength had been
achieved
Cold War
 Critiques of Containment
Henry Wallace: who denied America the moral right
to undertake the policy of containment in the first
place
“Wallace argued that the Soviet sphere of influence
in Central Europe was legitimate and that America's
resistance to it only intensified tension. He urged a
return to what he viewed as Roosevelt's policy: to
end the Cold War by American conciliation.” Henry
Kissinger
Cold War
 Lippman=realist
 Churchill=balance of power
 Wallace=radical
 Lippan/Curchill: accept USSR expansionism
represented a serious challenge contested the
strategy for resisting it
 Wallace: rejected every aspect of containment
Cold War

Wallace
Like most American liberals since Jefferson insisted that "the
same moral principles which governed in private life also
should govern in international affairs.“
United States had no moral right to intervene abroad until it
had its own society of prejudice, hatred and fear
Postulating the moral equivalence of American and Soviet
actions became a characteristic of the radical critique
throughout the Cold War
Cold War

Containment’s 1st challenge
Berlin
– June 1948, the Soviet Union attempted to control all of Berlin by
cutting surface traffic to and from the city of West Berlin
– The Truman administration reacted with a continual daily airlift which
brought food and supplies into the city of West Berlin
– This Airbridge to Berlin lasted until the end of September of 1949--although on May 12, 1949, the Soviet government yielded and lifted
the blockade
Cold War
Cold War

Korea
1947 “loss” of China
July 24, 1945 Potsdam Conference, President Truman asked
USSR help against Japan
Sept 9, 1945 US accepts Japanese surrender in Korea,
South of 38th parallel
Nov 14, 1947 U.N. Resolution to remove troops from Korea
after national elections.
April 8, 1948 President Truman orders withdrawal of US
troops from Korea
Aug 15, 1948 Republic of Korea proclaimed. Syngman Rhee
elected first president, Cold War
Cold War
Sept 9, 1948 Democratic People's Republic of Korea
claims jurisdiction over all Korea
 January 12 Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson
confirms Korea and Taiwan are outside American Far
East security cordon
 January 12 Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson
confirms Korea and Taiwan are outside American Far
East security cordon
 June 1 NK strength at 135,000, with seven assault
divisions and 150 T34 tanks

Col War
June 25 Korean time NK invades Republic of South
Korea (ROK) without warning
 June 25 UN Security Council demands NK stop its
attack and return to its borders
 June 29 ROK Capitol Seoul falls, bridges across Han
river destroyed. Most of ROK army trapped on northern
side
 June 30 President Truman commits US Troops to
enforce UN demand

Cold War
July 5 Task Force Smith, 1st Btn, 21st Regiment, 24th
Infantry Division, supported by Battery A, 52nd FA Btn,
crushed by NK 4th Division
 July 7 United Nations Command created, under
General Douglas MacArthur
 July 13 -July26 NK-6 drives unnoticed down the West
Coast, capturing Chonju, begins an assault on Chinju,
having outflanked the Eighth Army. NK-6 is positioned
to drive to Pusan and cut off all UN forces in
Korea (Pusan Perimeter)

Cold War
Cold War
July 29 General Walker issues 'Stand or Die' order
 Sept 15 Inchon Landings
 Sept 16-19 UN breaks the Pusan Perimeter cordon
 Sept 27 MacArthur given permission to cross the 38th
Parallel into North Korea
 October 19 NK capitol Pyongyang falls
 Nov 26-30 US 2nd and 25th Divisions are defeated and
begin general Eighth Army retreat in the west
 July 10, 1951 Truce talks begin at Kaesong
 August 23 Communists break off talks

Cold War
 October 25 Peace talks resume at Kaesong
 July 27, 1953 Cease-fire signed.
Cold War
 Containment tested again
Vietnam
– "We are not going to bungle into war.“ JFK
1919 Ho Chi Minh wrote to U.S. Secretary of State
Robert Lansing to seek help in freeing his people
from French colonial domination after the First World
War
– October 17, 1945 Ho Chi Minh cabled President Harry S. Truman,
seeking American support for Vietnam "to take part in the Advisory
Commission for the Far East.“
Cold War
 “…there are 1,100,000,000 brown people. In
many Eastern countries they are ruled by a
handful of whites and they resent it. Our goal
must be to help them achieve independence -1,100,000,000 potential enemies are
dangerous.“ FDR
State Department bureaucracy opposed his view and favored
French colonial continuation
Roosevelt died the following month
Cold War
 Truman’s focus was on Europe
 Korea
 Military aid to France vs Viet Minh
 Eisenhower & France
Nuclear solution
Ike rejects
Cold War
 Money Guns and Lawyers
 Ho Chi Minh had been strictly a nationalist until
rebuffed by the Americans in 1919
 Went to Moscow and joined the newly founded
Third International Conference of the Communist
Party
 France: Those who did not help the colonialists
would be helping the Communists
Cold War
Many in the U.S., in fact, were mildly sympathetic to the
Viet Minh as the fighting started in 1946
 General Matthew Ridgway had succeeded in his efforts
to convince Eisenhower to stay out of the Indochina
war, which at various times flared in Vietnam, Cambodia
and Laos
 Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev speech supporting
"wars of national liberation" and he specifically naming
Vietnam as an example

Cold War
 Kennedy: Maxwell Taylor Chief of General Staff
8000 ground combat troops to Vietnam for a start
JFK refused
Moved troops around as a show of force
2d Berlin Crisis
US economy, civil rights, labor strife, agriculture and
the threat of nuclear war
Cold War
May 10, 1961 JCS went on the record as favoring the
use of U.S. combat troops in Vietnam
 Two years of dithering and “in-fighting”
 In June he told the graduating class of military officers
at West Point:"This is a new kind of war, new in its
intensity, ancient in its origin ... war by guerrillas,
subversives, insurgents, assassins; war by ambush
instead of combat, by infiltration instead of aggression,
seeking victory by exhausting the enemy instead of
engaging him.“
 Kennedy mistook the nature of the conflict

Cold War
 Kennedy’s generals didn’t correct him
 Best and brightest
 Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Robert
Kennedy, Roswell Gilpatrick, George
Ball, Robert Lovett, Arthur Schlesinger, Theodore
Sorensen, Pierre Salinger
Cold War
 McNamara
Former Pres. Ford Motor Co.
Sec Def
All numbers
No policy
No theory
Cold War

Gulf of Tonkin: The thin end of the wedge
Gulf of Tonkin staging area of the U.S. Seventh Fleet August
1964
Destroyer USS Maddox conducting a "DeSoto patrol", an
espionage mission
2 August North Vietnamese torpedo patrol boats attack
Maddox
U.S.S. Ticonderoga sent aircraft to repel North Vietnamese
attackers. Sunk one boat damaged others
Cold War
 Gulf of Tonkin
In an attempt to possibly lure the North Vietnamese
into an engagement, both the Maddox and the C.
Turner Joy were in the gulf on August 4
The captain of the Maddox had read his ship’s
instruments as saying that the ship was under attack
or had been attacked and began an immediate
retaliatory strike into the night.
Cold War
 Captain concluded hours later that there might
not have been an actual attack.
 Event was purposely misconstrued when
presented to Congress and the public by
President Johnson and his administration
 August 7, the "Tonkin Gulf Resolution“ passed,
416 to 0 by the House and 88 to 2 by the Senate
Cold War
Gulf of Tonki
Cold War
 The resolution
Stipulated that the President of the United States
could "take all necessary measures to repel armed
attack against the forces of the United States and to
prevent further aggression.”
July 1965, the U.S. would had 80,000 troops
mobilized and operating in South Vietnam
Cold War
“You know you never defeated us on the battlefield,”
said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese
colonel pondered this remark a moment. “That may be
so,” he replied, “but it is also irrelevant.” Hanoi, 1975
 Viet Nam war: Nature of the conflict

Kennedy had it wrong
Dau Tranh the struggle
– Truong Chinh (1907-1988)
– The Resistance Will Win, a 1947 treatise on people's war, its
strategies, and its Maoist roots
Cold War
 Mao
The enemy advances-we retreat
The enemy camps-we harass
The enemy tires-we attack
The enemy retreats-we pursue
Cold War
 Elements of Dau Tranh
The people themselves are seen as the agents of
war and victory
Mobilization of all persons and families
No such thing as noncombatants
War longer than Western leaders anticipate
Tactics and ideology are less important than united
front organizations and full mobilization
Cold War
 Dau Tranh
Armed struggle is unlike Western combat
Kidnapping, assassinations, guerrilla forces, and
political violence
Placed the theater of war within hamlets and villages
in southern Vietnam as well as within the major cities
As areas of southern Vietnam became "liberated,“
communist forces gained not only new friends and
allies but safe havens
Cold War
Armed Dau Trahn
Political Dau Tranh
Enemy
Armed Dau Tranh
Regular Force Strategy
Hi-tech
Limited Obj
Protracted Conflict
Maoistic
Guerilla
War
New
Rev.
Guerilla
Cold War
Political Dau Tranh
Dich Van
Action among
the enemy
Binh Van
Action among the
military
Dan Van
Action among the
people
Cold War

“…we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any
hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure
the survival and the success of liberty.” JFK
Moral imperative
– Preserve the right of self determination establish democratic S.
Vietnam
– Contest between open and closed society
– S. Vietnam could become bulwark against totalitarianism in SE Asia
Cold War
 US competing perception of nature of war
Orthodox , small scale, limited size, Korean-like
conflict
– Standard application mass movement
– Fire power
– Technology
– “No substitute for victory”
Cold War

1965
Ia Drang Valley
– Albany
– X-ray

1966
Mekong Delta
– Viet Cong

1967
“Junction City”
– Largest of the war
– Cambodian border
Cold War
 1968
Tet
– Khe Sanh
– Saigon
– Hue
Cold War
 1969
First substantive peace talks in Paris
“Vietnamization”
Peak US troop strength 548,482
Cold War

1969
Battle of Ap Bia (Hamburger Hill)

1970
Cambodia 30 April-30 June

1971
11 August all land combat turned over to the Vietnamese

1972
Easter Offensive
Mining of N. Vietnamese harbors
Cold War
 1973
23 January-Cease Fire
29 March last US troops leave
April 1975 Saigon falls, Ho Chi Minh City
Cold War
 Vietnam, why was it the way it was?
Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Great Society
– Speech at Ann Arbor MI May, 1964
– “The Great Society rests on abundance and
liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and
racial injustice, to which we are totally committed
in our time. But that is just the beginning.”
Cold War
 Great Society
The Economic Opportunity Act 1964
– Provided training to disadvantaged youths aged 16-21
– Helped low income students to work their way through
college
– Recruited volunteers to work and teach in low income
areas
Medicare and Medicaid 1965
– This provided medical insurance for the over-65s and
hospital coverage for the poor
Cold War
 Great Society
Environmental Protection
– A series of laws to try and ensure clean water and enforce
air quality standards
City Improvements – The Development Act 1964
– Provided money for replacing the inner city with new
homes.
Cold War
Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land From which we
sprung.
Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young. -- A. E. Housman
ESSAYS

Compare/contrast Marxist-Leninist Communism with Nazism.

Recount the issues and decisions that resulted from the Versailles treaty
that led to WWII

Contrast two opposing schools of thought on the cause of and cure for
the Great Depression.

How did the policy that descended from the “Long Telegram” affect
Soviet-American relations?

WWI and WWII have been called the “Second Thirty Years War,” why?