No previous American President and Secretary Of State had ever before or since worked so constructive together. Acheson was essential to Truman’s success in part because Acheson rightly saw Truman, who may have started as a backwoods politician as a world statesman, not simply because he was POTUS in the plenitude of American power but because he had an exceptional sense of duty and power of decision, and because he could distinguish the big issues from the little ones.
It was my conviction then, and it remains even more so my conviction today, that we misnamed the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, and that these should obviously called the Acheson Doctrine and the Acheson Plan.
Foreign policy in a democracy runs many risks — the risk of premature disclosure of delicate negotiations, the risk of duplicity by less scrupulous regimes. But those risks pale in significance compared to the danger that arises when democracy’s servants have arrogated themselves to power to ignore constitutional restraints. Those restraints give life and meaning to the idea of self-government. One ought to remember that one of the distinguishing features of our democracy and of our free society is not the existence of an executive but the existence of a clearly independent legislature.
There is no believer more devout than a convert.
We could walk into his office anytime, explain what we had on our mind, and he would listen intently. He would not only relay his decision but explain with care why he had arrived at it. He believed communication of ideas within an organization should be encouraged from the bottom up and reciprocated from the top down. The lucidity of his reasoning and clarity of his expression were such that we who worked immediately for him were able to grasp quickly how his mind worked on a particular issue. As a result, we could talk to the Joint Chiefs Of Staff, the Congress, the press or representatives of other countries in full confidence that we understood his and the President’s general intentions.
As it did so, it began to appear as just a bit less formidable than that described in the 1st chapter of Genesis. That was to create a world out of chaos; ours to create half a world, a free half, out of the same material without blowing the whole to pieces in the process. The wonder of it is how much was done.
Whether the going was tough, Acheson was in his element. He had a remarkable sense of the sweep of history and the major events of his life. He acted with calmness, courage and decisiveness.
Like a number of the graduates of Groton School, he had absorbed a desire for, and a pride in, personal excellence combined with a breadth of concern for the interests of the common man.
In his mind, however, economic assistance was primarily a weapon in the struggle against Communism; the Marshall Plan primarily a program for achieving strategic, not economic, goals.
All of those involved agreed on Western Europe’s economic and strategic importance and on the need to keep its resources in “friendly hands.” This required further efforts to resuscitate the German economy, as well as a comprehensive recovery scheme supervised by European rather than national institutions.
They called instead for American initiatives that ranged from short-term financial assistance for the flagging pound to a long-term program that would lower American tariffs, sustain a high level of domestic demand for imports, and support the price of raw materials produced in the sterling area. Without these initiatives, the British warned, they would have to safeguard their reserves and their leadership of the sterling area through restrictionist measures that divided the non-Communist world into rival sterling and dollar blocs.
These were the reserves of the sterling area, the British kept insisting, and they would not be compromised for strictly European gains.
By the summer of 1951, however, Congress was in no mood to support economic, as opposed to military, assistance. The Korean War had led to higher taxes, raw material shortages, burgeoning deficits, and inflationary pressures in the US. It had strengthened the position of Congressional conservatives who claimed that American resources were limited and that further drains would lead to economic disaster and political regimentation.
The world he looked back upon with considerable nostalgia was stable and predictable. It was an English-influenced world in which Americans shared. It was destroyed in 2 world wars, along with the illusions about progress and universal peace.
Over and over again there comes up this question of our special relationship with the British. It exists; it seems to me to be the very heart of what we must do to try and hold the world together, but it seems to me to be more and more something you must know and never speak about.
Acheson may not have been “arrogant of heart and mind but he was sometimes arrogant of expression.” He spoke to ambassadors as teachers lecturing to not very intelligent students.
But what attracted general attention was the advice he offered to the British ally: namely, that the efforts to separate itself from Europe either through a putative “special relationship” with the US or through its leadership in the British Commonwealth had failed. Britain must turn its energies toward cultivating its European role both for the sake of its own economic future and for the sake of the success of the Atlantic community.
Even those journals which accepted Acheson’s judgments could note with regret that “in this transitional period we have a right to ask that our friends should not make matters worse. It is the nature of nations diminished in power to feel humiliated when that fact is called to their attention.”
If Acheson was worn over to these forms of European integration, it was partly because of his admiration for French ingenuity. Wryly, he observed with reference to the Schuman Plan that “the most terrible preparation for diplomatic life is the training in Anglo-Saxon law. That gives you the spurious idea to be specific: you try to find out categorically what things mean. People who have really great constructive ideas don’t really know what they mean.”
De Gaulle’s intervention in Europe threatened to undo this growth by its exclusion of Britain and particularly by what Acheson identified as the “undignified and demeaning role” designed for Germany. Europe would be detached from the US under France’s leadership. To Acheson this Europe would be weak and fractious, and in the long run Germany would become a threat again if it was relegated to an inferior status. Even more likely, a weak Europe would fall under Soviet domination.
These forthright prescriptions were accompanied by harsh oral commentaries which once again alienated allies and colleagues. Perhaps it was inevitable that a former Secretary of State with firm convictions would have difficulty accepting a lesser role in another administration, even if his advices had been followed to the letter.
It is noteworthy how frequently the term “illusion” appears in his writings. Acheson himself certainly was not free of illusions but his illusions were not those of the dogmatic.
He argued that the basic science of nuclear fission was known throughout the world. What atomic secrets there were would “reveal themselves” in time. Thus the US had little to lose and much to gain by an open approach to nuclear matters. An important first step would be the offer to bring Russia into the partnership for the international control of atomic energy.
No formal vote was taken. Instead the President asked each participant to submit a written statement of his views.
Of course private reality is one thing, public perception is another. A distorted version of the WH meeting was immediately leaked to the press.
Truman seemed to backtrack in observing that no matter how much basic scientific knowledge the Russians might have or gain in the future, they lacked the resources and the industrial “know how” to match the American accomplishments in nuclear weapons development. As for production secrets, Truman said that the US would not share them even with its allies.
Part of the reason for the changed atmosphere was that Byrnes had returned from the London Council of Foreign Ministers meeting depressed by his lack of progress there and embittered by what he saw as Molotov’s obstructionism. It was not a propitious moment to advocate working with the Russians.
In 1946 Truman had told Oppenheimer that the Russians would “never” get the bomb. Barely 1 month before he was proven wrong, a CIA report on the status of the Soviet atomic program assured the President that the USSR would not be able to produce a fission explosion for “at least” another year and would probably not have bombs in its arsenal before mid-1953.
Acheson was not advocating immorality or amorality, but rather what he later called a “strategic morality.” He likened this sort of approach to problems to that of Lincoln on the subject of freeing the slaves during the Civil War. For Lincoln his first and highest priority was preserving the Union. If he could have the Union by freeing all the slaves, he would do this. If he could have the Union by freeing none of the slaves, he would do that. For Acheson his overriding responsibility was to the interests of the American people and to the security of the US. Arguments about the “ultimate” fate of mankind, or the long-range implications of technology on the human species were irrelevant to his immediate purpose.
But 1949 was not 1946. The Communist victory in China, the Soviet acquisition of America’s “sacred truth,” and the growing power of anti-Communist hysteria had altered the political landscape.
Global containment had replaced limited containment. A few weeks after the H-bomb announcement Truman authorized American aid to support the French in their war against the Viet Minh in Indochina. When NK forces poured across the 38th parallel in late June, Truman responded with massive American military force in an area previously considered outside US vital interest.
Turkey and its strategic importance, while central in discussions within the executive branch, were consciously played down in the speech. So were direct references to the vital interests of the US and the strategic importance of Greece. The administration wished to avoid alarming an American public unaccustomed to strategic military thinking in time of peace.
It also expressed the necessity of choosing between alternative ways of life: one, based on the will of the majority, was distinguished by free institutions; the other, based on the will of a minority forcibly imposed on the majority, relied upon terror and oppression.
It should also be noted that of the 13 non-Communist states which bordered Russia before the war, only 5 were independent when it was over. Of the 5 independent countries left, 2 had a special status: Finland was neutralized, while Afghanistan retained its traditional role of a buffer state. Of the remaining 3, Norway, Turkey, and Iran, the latter 2 were in serious jeopardy of being drawn into the Soviet fold, and the US was the only power capable of confronting this turn of events.
After Henderson recommended to Acheson that the Soviets be warned before they took steps from which they could not retreat, Acheson consulted the Departments of War and Navy, impressing upon his colleagues that the US response should not be a bluff, and that it required certainty of American support in the event Turkey were attacked.
The USSR once fully committed on a subject was difficult to persuade otherwise. An appeal to reason was insufficient. The only thing which would be the conviction that the US was prepared, if necessary, to meet aggression with force of arms.
Truman subsequently directed Acheson to have the American ambassador explain the American attitude, and to tell the Turkish leaders that it had been formulated only after full consideration of the matter at the highest levels. The ambassador was instructed to tell the Turks that their reply should be reasonable, but firm.
In the interim, the US began to revise its general policies — not only toward Turkey but, in light of the decision on Turkey, to Iran and Greece as well.
These policies placed symbolic value on the principle of support for the independence and integrity of small countries. The strategic situation of each was related to that of the others. Together they were seen as a bulwark which protected American interests in the Middle East as a whole, the focal point of which was Middle East oil.
Britain’s economic situation was also in dire straits. As a result of the war, Britain had lost two-thirds of its exports, one-fourth of its merchant marine, one-half of its overseas investments, and one-fourth of its financial reserves. The government had increased its overseas debt by a factor of six.
It is my belief that US officials confronted what had become a fairly well-defined problem: whether they should allow Soviet intimidation, unopposed by the US, to force the countries on the Soviet Union’s southern flank to accommodate Soviet interests and, if so, the extent to which they should allow it to happen.
Whether Soviet pressures on Iran and Turkey can be justified by the USSR’s enormous losses during WW2 depends on one’s point of view. Where was the line between legitimate defensive interests and aggression? Was the acquisition of 273K square miles of territory insufficient for Soviet security needs?
The administration clearly regarded the language employed in the president’s speech as necessary to obtain public support. To gain that support, it felt the necessity of resorting to imaginary and rhetoric which encouraged a misleadingly simplistic view or model of the world. The only way that nations can function internationally is to use such representations, with their attending conceptions of morality and power.
In the process, decision-makers adopted a simplistic, inflexible conception of the world, complete with monolithic Communism and — in place of rotten apples — falling dominoes. The consequence: a perception of international events which tended to assume its own reality, and defined the world in its own terms. The Department of State’s task of continuously redefining the international situation was discouraged. Instead, abstractions justified security interests and imposed themselves on a world for which those abstractions were increasingly irrelevant.
China’s place in the Cold War under the Acheson plan, then, was unique. It held neither the promise nor the threat of Europe. It could not provide the markets or commodities that other areas would supply. It was essentially insignificant, complicated — a morass better avoided. Acheson, the Cold War warrior, did not have to fight his battle in China.
Above all, Acheson must be understood as an Atlanticist. He felt fundamentally indifferent to Asia and lamented the fact that China’s collapse required the taking of time from European affairs to try to deal with unfathomable Chinese politics.
He never seriously considered a commitment sufficient to save China from Communist takeover, husbanding America’s limited resources for more significant purposes. With his emphasis on European recovery and the creation of NATO, even the outbreak of war in Korea became an opportunity to increase military aid to Europe.
Americans generally shared Acheson’s indifference to Asia, paying most of their attention to domestic issues and looking abroad, when they did, only as far as the familiar shores of European homelands.
Throughout 1949 British and American consultations regarding China occurred regularly. The Secretary of State tried to delay British recognition of Beijing in order to maintain a united front for negotiating purposes.
The military particularly objected to commercial ties with an enemy nation. Left to its own devices, Red China would prove a drain on the Communist bloc.
The DoD acted upon its reservation by delaying cooperation with the Department of State in drafting guidelines requisite to the implementation of NSC 41.
By pursuing a policy of modest trade with China, Acheson hoped to further the development of an independent, even if Communist, regime in Beijing. Building on the experience that the Truman Administration had had with Yugoslavia, Acheson believed that the Communist world was not monolithic. Mao possessed the same divisive characteristics as Tito, having come to power without Kremlin support, having led a nationalistic resistance against foreign invaders and having nurtured a cult of personality.
Cabot concluded that conditions in China were even more favorable to the West than they had been in Yugoslavia, particularly if the US avoided hostile criticism of the regime, trade restrictions and other pressures.
The final blow thwarting Acheson’s pragmatism came when NK forces crossed the border initiating war. This event pulled the props out from under Acheson’s efforts at moderation, calling into question both his own convictions and his ability to defend an unpopular viewpoint against critics.
Acheson’s reasoning ignored the central elements of sovereignty and security confronting policy makers in Beijing. Having failed to protect a moderate policy toward China at home, he similarly failed to convince Beijing of American moderation in Asia. Mao concluded that the US had decided to attack China from bases in Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam and that, therefore, China must act.
An old enemy suddenly became a new ally. Few Americans could have imagined such an outcome in 1945.
For Acheson, the economies of Germany and Japan became, as it were, “workshops” of their respective regions — the productive centers upon which the various national economies of Europe and Asia depended.
The reasons the PPS hypothesized that a disarmed Japan could not possibly maintain a position of independent neutrality in the future were that: first, Japan held an extremely strategic geopolitical position; second, Japan was the largest industrial power in Asia; third, it possessed the largest reserves in Asia trained in modern warfare; and fourth, it was the only nation in Asia that could mobilize its people on a national scale. Consequently, the PPS thought it absolutely essential that Japan could not fall into Soviet hands.
Kenny strongly recommend that an eventual peace treaty be “as brief, as general and non-punitive as possible.” His point was that to retain Japan as a friend, the aim of the treaty should not be to punish the Japanese for past wrongs, but rather to give them “a pat on the back” and show American trust in them.
The suggested that the best way to ensure Tokyo’s allegiance to the West was to treat Japan as an equal member of the Western nations, capitalizing on Japanese sensitivity to the Western sense of White superiority.
Confirmation of the Soviet test and the almost simultaneous consolidation of Communist power in China provoked growing pressure within the administration and from Congress not only for a more vigorous atomic weapons program but also for a full-scale review of US security policy.
The picture that greeted Acheson when he returned to government in 1949 was one of a defense establishment wracked with inter-service rivalries and forced to Mae do under presidentially-decreed budget ceilings which gave precedence to fiscal and economic concerns rather than security needs. Although Truman consistently stressed the importance of military readiness, he deemed it imprudent to burden the country’s economy with heavy defense expenditures. Faced with an unprecedented postwar inflation rate and a public debt swollen by WW2, Truman decided early in his presidency that balancing the budget and reducing the debt should be among his foremost concerns.
By 1949, Western security was becoming progressively wedded to a relatively small stockpile of nuclear weapons held by the US, probably somewhere around 130 bombs. Such a policy may have made sense, but only so long as the US retained a monopoly on the atomic bomb.
Although Acheson was also skeptical of relying on nuclear weapons, he considered Kennan’s faith in diplomacy and aversion to military power, including even nuclear power, naive and inappropriate, given the nature of the Soviet threat. From Acheson’s perspective, a vigorous, forceful policy made more sense and, in the long run, stood a better chance of success. “The only way to deal with the Soviet Union is to create situations of strength.”
The USSR, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.
Occasionally, one had to go through the motions in order to win over popular opinion at home and abroad. But he did not expect negotiations to do much more than confirm power realities. When one negotiated with the Russians talk was not to be separated from action. “Negotiation and action are parts of one whole.” Action is often the best form of negotiation. It affects the environment, which in large part is likely to determine the outcome of negotiation.
The concept of negotiating from strength has left a mixed legacy: it helped bring about an unusually stable bipolar world order and contributed indirectly to unprecedented growth among the major and several of the not so major capitalist nations. But it also institutionalized destructive rivalry in a zero sum game of power politics, accelerated the arms race, and culminated in America’s penchant to intervene in Third-World areas, including Southeast Asia.
British financial and military power eroded. London no longer provided the means for the production of wealth in other countries. Free trade areas, “which once furnished both a market of vast importance and a commodities exchange,” no longer existed. The British navy could no longer guarantee security of life and investment in distant parts of the earth.
Even if they did not attack directly, they might seek to use 5th columnists and disaffected elements to undermine the strength and determination of nations in North and South America, including the US.
Acheson spent a good deal of time on the work of the UN but his heart was never in it. It was too idealistic and unwieldy for Acheson’s taste. He was attuned to power realities and to complex interrelationships between postwar social developments, economic arrangements, and geopolitical configurations.
Acheson placed great emphasis on the IMF and the WB because they were the indispensable prerequisites for stabilizing currencies, liberalizing trade, promoting peace, and fostering free enterprise. Without these institutions nations would have to revert to preferential agreements and exchange controls. Such developments would not only injure American commercial interests, but eventually would force the US to adopt similar measures. “In a very short time, it would begin to change all our institutions. We could not have a purely self-contained American economy with free institutions which we have today. We would have to have more and more government controls.”
Control over or access to critical resources and industrial infrastructure, after all, were the chief determinants of long-term military capabilities.
But as Acheson and his advisers pondered risks and benefits, they once again rejected the appeal of Kennan’s vision. Their primary national security goal was not to unify Germany or ease tensions in Europe; it was to harness Germany’s economic and military potential for the Atlantic community.
Vanderberg remarked that it seemed that the American negotiating position would insure a permanent Cold War. Acheson retorted that he did not think the Cold War would be permanent, but it was true that the American negotiating posture would do nothing to stop it. His advisers had been unable to find anything to offer the Russians. Be that as it may, the administration’s goal was not to resolve differences but to gather strength.
They fretted that a peace treaty signed without Russian consent would not only violate Soviet rights in Japan under the Potsdam surrender terms but also would legitimate a Soviet effort to send an occupation force to Japan. Acheson acknowledged that the actions he proposed would be anathema to the Kremlin. But risks had to be incurred. The US had to work to keep the entire strategic area from Japan to India “on our side of the fence and not on the Russian side.” The Soviets might be provoked, but they could not respond effectively. They might possess local military superiority. But local balances were not the key factor in motivating great powers’s behavior. “There is also to be taken into account the total power, military and industrial, actual and potential, which might be brought into play if there should be armed aggression.”
Acheson recognized that building situations of strength required a great deal of risk-taking. He understood that Soviet interests and sometimes Soviet rights were endangered by American initiatives. But so long as the US retained the atomic monopoly and superior warming capabilities, he did not think the ruler son the Kremlin could resist American determination.
Without superior aggregate military strength in being and readily mobilizable, a policy of containment — which in effect a policy of calculated and gradual coercion — is no more than a policy of bluff.
The Secretary Of State pressed for a still greater rearmament effort. No amount of military spending was too much to support his diplomacy. Acheson insisted that:
It would not be too much if we had all the troops that the military want. If we had all the things that our European allies want it would not be too much. If we had the equipment to call out the reserves it would not be too much. If we had a system for full mobilization it would not be too much.
What we have been trying to do is to encourage the French and help them do everything we can to keep them doing what they are doing, which is taking the primary responsibility for this fight in Indochina, and not letting them in any way transfer it to us.
And despite all the rhetoric about non-intervention in Germany internal affairs, Acheson (as well as Schuman and Anthony Eden) were aware that the retention of troops inside Germany and possession of the right to protect these troops gave the West the ability and the justification to intervene should unrest within Germany or threats from without ever make it necessary to do so.
Their goal was to force the Kremlin to accept a configuration of power that would eventually erode Soviet influence even within its own periphery. Given such objectives, Acheson and his advisers never placed much hope on negotiating with the Kremlin; building situations of strength was far more important than negotiating from strength. Negotiations, after all, were designed to confirm the superiority already achieved through action in the center and on the periphery.
These tasks could be accomplished if the US used its power as the British had used theirs in the 19th century. The US had to play the role of economic hegemon, had to balance power in Europe, had to preserve order on the periphery, and had to insure the free flow of goods, capital, and labor between developed and underdeveloped nations. Whether or not a Soviet threat existed, Acheson acknowledged, these tasks needed to be performed.
Personal freedom and private enterprise at home required the maintenance of an orderly, balanced, stable, interdependent, and unthreatening international system. These views represented the core of Acheson’s mindset.
For the most part, however, the Kremlin could not alter developments outside its own orbit without incurring unacceptable risks. Its client states grew restless. East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland rebelled; China split off.
But how about the waste, the costs, the endless crises, the dissipation of resources on the arms race, the wars on the periphery? These, too, were part of the legacy of building strength and seeking preponderance. The configuration of power sought by Acheson meant insecurity for the Kremlin.
Conrad in talking about people has 2 classifications — those that have honor and those who have not. General Marshall stands at the head of men of honor. The word “integrity” to him means oneness of character which is a virtuous character. So far as I ever knew he had no smallness; no ego that I was able to discover that got in his way. He was looking at the thing to do, not looking at himself in the reflection of public opinion or in the reflection of whatever others would accord him.
When Acheson asked Marshall how he wanted the State Department run, Acheson recalled the General’s saying that he
was to be his chief of staff and I was to run the Department and that all matters between the Secretary and the Department were to come to him with my recommendation, whatever it might be, attached to the action proposed. This we did. I think for the first time in the history of the Department of State, there was a line of command.
Marshall made clear that he wanted a well-organized central secretariat that controlled the flow of messages and coordinated responses to directives.
Marshall insisted that a Policy Planning Staff be established. As Army Chief of Staff he had felt that the War Department needed a small staff to look beyond current operations to likely future problems, with recommendations for solutions.
Another comfort will be something that is hard to say but which I cannot leave unsaid. It will come from 18 months that I was privileged to work with you. To say what makes greatness in a man is very difficult. Twice in my life that has happened to me. Once with Justice Holmes and once with you. Greatness is a quality of character and is not the result of circumstances. It had to do with grandeur and with completeness of character. Other men have had very great qualities, but there has been some crevice where weakness lurked.
Those 18 months were a great honor. I hope also they have been a great lesson. I shall try to profit by them, and shall take comfort in thinking from time to time if what I am doing is what you would have done, then it meets the highest and surest test I know how to apply.
These words are not easy to type. I hope you will forgive.
He always insisted that Acheson as head of the State Department and senior in protocol precede him in entering a room or in a procession. And he settled lurking problems of the military versus the civilians by seating himself on the same side of the table with the Secretary of State rather than with the military officers.
The French were particularly upset, both because of the economic impact and because they felt they had been given “grounds for suspecting that an Anglo-American condominium was in the making and that British leaders, having formed new ties with the US, were seeking national advantage at the expense of real economic cooperation with the Continent.
Wheat is a basic commodity, a staple of international trade, a symbol of the food on which survival depends. Such products, it was believed in those days, often would — and should — be the subjects of international commodity agreements that would assure adequate supplies by guaranteeing producing countries markets at reasonable prices and at the same time giving importing countries the chance to buy at prices that did not rise dramatically just because there were temporary shortages. Stability was the hallmark of this approach.
My testimony aims, among other things, to dispel the belief that from the beginning of this epoch we felt sure of our clear convictions, and had an unconquerable faith in the future and an optimism that could survive every test. On the contrary, what remains engraved in my memory are the doubts, the anguish felt each day, the fear of failing, the constant wish to correct what we had done in the light of experience and always — I can never say it enough — the consciousness of the crushing memories of the period between the wars.
The idea behind the Bretton Woods arrangements was of a set of national economies that were joined together at certain points — in trade, in exchange rates, etc. As in carpentry, if you got the joins right the structure would be solid; so there were rules about trade and payments and the promise of international help in maintaining equilibrium. That arrangement — reinforced, perhaps, with national measures to control capital movements — was supposed to permit each country to manage its own national economy.