THE TRUMAN ADMINISTRATION RATION

AND NSC-68

 

Will Benedicks

Tallahassee Community College

 

The year 1949 witnessed the overthrow of the Chinese Nationalist government by the communist forces of Mao Tsetung and Soviet Russia's first atomic bomb detonation. These two events reinforced upon President Harry S Truman and Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson certain conclusions they had reached concerning their foreign policy program. In April 1950, the National Security Council issued report number sixty-eight (NSC-68), a blueprint for rearmament and for a global policy of containing communism by force when deemed necessary by the Executive.(1) In essence, NSC-68 reorganized American foreign policy following the administration's viewpoint, and became, in effect, a vehicle for their ideas.

 

That Russia was a monolithic giant moving toward world domination was one of the significant conclusions reached by the Truman administration in regard to United States foreign policy. The President and his advisors understood the Russian intention to be the spread of the Marxist doctrine by all means available: political, subversive, economic, and when deemed advantageous, military. Accordingly, this dynamic expansion of communism had at its root the need to eliminate the United States, which, as the defender of world freedom, was the only major threat to the Kremlin's designs. Created on October 1, 1949, the communist People's Republic of China was regarded as one more brick in the Kremlin foundation and was seen as a warning signal to America by the Truman administration.(2)

 

Russian expansion could have been viewed less seriously because of America's nuclear monopoly. On August 29, 1949, however, Soviet scientists detonated an atomic device, which radically altered America's military and diplomatic strategy. No longer would it be possible to trust the deterrent effect of a thinly dispersed conventional military force backed by nuclear capabilities.(3) Thus, the Kremlin's intent to expand communism assumed a very real, imminent threat to America, and as such necessitated a radical reassessment of its foreign policy.

 

One segment of policy brought into immediate focus concerned America's nuclear diplomacy and capabilities. On the diplomatic level, the United States had enjoyed a nuclear monopoly and was trying to protect it through a call for international control with Russia of atomic weapons. According to Deputy Undersecretary of State Dean Rusk, this created a situation that resulted in considerable confusion on the issue.(4)

 

On the military level, a debate had been in progress among members of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on the development of a "super" weapon, the hydrogen bomb. The Soviet explosion added impetus to those lobbying for the weapon: so much so that by January 1950, the Atomic Energy Commissioners reversed their October 1949 position and called for the development of the hydrogen bomb. This was a change that Secretary of State Acheson readily accepted, in keeping with his foreign policy perspective.

 

A direct byproduct of Acheson's decision, but not the only reason for it, was the resignation on January 1, 1950 of George Kennan, the Director of the Policy Planning Staff. Kennan, who agreed with J. Robert Oppenheimer that the bomb should not be developed, argued against the administration's concept of Russia's wanting to expand communism at all costs. He believed that Russia was not prepared to go to war for expansion, and, consequently, there was no need to develop the bomb.(5) Or if that was not feasible, Kennan, taking up Oppenheimer's suggestion, wished to use the threat of the bomb's development to coerce Russia to a nuclear limitation agreement.(6) Kennan was unable to reach an accord with Secretary Acheson. The situation was rectified by Paul Nitze, a team player and supporter of administration policies, who succeeded Kennan as Director of Policy Planning.(7)

 

Within one month of Nitze's appointment, President Truman, following the recommendations of a Special Committee on the Development of Thermonuclear Weapons, issued his January 31, 1950 directive instructing the AEC to "determine the technical feasibility of a thermonuclear weapon . . . and the necessary ordinance and carrier program concurrently. " The directive also stated that the President would, "indicate publicly the intention of this government to continue work to determine the feasibility of a thermonuclear weapon." Most importantly, it declared,

That the president direct the Secretary of State and the  Secretary of Defense to undertake a re-examination of our objectives in peace and war and the effect of these objectives on our strategic plans, in light of the probable fission bomb capability and possible thermonuclear capability of the Soviet Union.(8)

 

The final result of this directive was "A Report to the National Security Council on United States Objectives and Programs for National Security," dated April 14, 1950 and given the file number sixty-eight (NSC-68). As a document, the report detailed the basic purpose of the United States in opposing the Soviet Union's fundamental design for conquest. It further examined the economic growth, both actual and potential, of both nations with an emphasis on military capability. The report also compared American and Soviet atomic weaponry capability and their stockpiles. At the same time the document explored the question of atomic energy control. NSC-68 also assessed four possible courses of United States action based on its findings: continuing current policy with no increase in defense spending, returning to isolationism, fighting a war with Russia, or rapidly building political, economic, and military strength in the free world.(9)

 

Succinctly, the report described an aggressive Russia with designs on world domination that was marshalling all of its military and economic resources for the day when it must confront its main adversary, the United States. As a result, the United States was steadily losing the military and economic superiority it had enjoyed after World War II. Of the four options listed above, NSC-68 concluded that the only acceptable course of action open to the United States was a rapid buildup of political, economic, and military strength in the free world. This was the Truman administration's viewpoint re-echoed; a strong line must be drawn to contain communism. Thus, the report's recommendations were in exact agreement with President Truman's and Secretary of State Acheson's foreign policy.(10) As such, the NSC-68 report was considered almost perfect and was never truly open to reconsideration.

 

It is with this perspective that the draft review process for NSC-68 must be examined. Prior to its release, the administration received inputs on the draft summary from two source areas: the state-defense review group and certain assistant undersecretaries of state. Once the report was released, one major source area was consulted, the Ad-Hoc Committee of NSC-68.

 

The state defense review group consisted of a number of important officials. From the State Department: Paul H. Nitze, Director of Policy Planning Staff; R. Gordon Arneson, Special Assistant Secretary of State; Carlton Savage; George Butler; and Harry S. Schwartz, all members of the policy planning staff. The Defense Department members were: Major General Burns, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Foreign Military Affairs; Major General Landon, Member of the Joint Chief of Staff Advisory Committee; Mr. Najeeb E. Halaby, Director Office of Military Affairs; and Mr. Robert Lebaron, Assistant to Secretary of Defense on Atomic Energy Affairs. The lone National Security Council representative to the review group was James S. Lay, Jr., the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council.(11) The group conferred with six specialists during the review process.

 

These specialists all agreed in general with the draft summary of NSC-68. Perhaps that is why there is no significant difference between the draft copy they read and the report as it was issued in April! Another valid explanation is that the report reflected the views of the administration on foreign policy and, therefore, was not open to change in principle. Rather, the report was used by the administration as a sounding board for inputs into possible considerations in making NSC-68 more acceptable to both Congress and the public.(12)

 

Via memoranda to Secretary of State Acheson, the administration next received inputs on a draft summary of NSC-68 from certain key undersecretaries.(13) The first was from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Llewellyn Thompson, who stated, "The conclusions do not flow logically from analysis and some of the most important suggestions in the paper are not directly supported by the analysis." He also recognized the need to have a national policy with full support of the administration, Congress, and the public. He advised that "a board of commissioners" ought "to review the conclusions of NSC-68."(14)

 

John D. Hickerson, Assistant Secretary of State for United Nations Affairs, was the next to submit his opinion. He agreed with the report, subject to certain conditions. Mr. Hickerson believed that the principal allies of the United States, France and the United Kingdom, should be considered before a decision was reached. These nations should concur with the conclusions and match the efforts of the United States. If they did not, the United States should reexamine its position. Another major problem brought out by Hickerson was that the "development of an adequate political and economic framework for achievement of long range objectives" was not clearly spelled out.(15)

 

On April 4, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Willard L. Thorpe, in his appraisal of the summary draft wrote:

One underlying assumption in the report is the U.S.S.R. is steadily reducing the discrepancy between its overall economic strength and that of the United States. In so far as the evidence in this report is concerned, I do not feel that this proposition is demonstrated, but rather the reverse.(16)

 

From this perspective, a reanalysis of the paper and its conclusions might have been in order. The administration, however, viewed the findings from a different direction: If the United States was capable of generating more economic strength than the report stated, then the country would be able to shoulder more easily the thirty-five to fifty billion dollar defense budget envisioned by it.(17)

 

In general agreement, the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs, Raymond A. Hare, wrote that the report should take into account less tangible considerations that might temper the conclusions reached. Specifically, Mr. Hare speculated whether there might not be a point in Soviet expansion (China) beyond which the benefits to the Kremlin would turn to disadvantages. He also proposed making the cold war warmer by infusing into it ideological principles to give it meaning and create public support of the draft conclusions.(18)

 

This repeated concern for public support resulted in further administration campaigning. The period between March and June 1950 was laden with speeches by the President and his Secretary of State repeating the need for a bipartisan foreign policy and voicing concern over the communist threat to the country.(19)

 

However, a closer scrutiny of the concern over the communist threat of this period concludes that NSC-68 was one case where the threats to the national security of the United States were oversold.(20) With regard to the repeated calls for a bipartisan approach to foreign policy, Secretary Acheson, reflecting in 1969 on the 1948 Congress, stated,

We were learning again, what everyone in the executive branch since Washington's day had learned, that to advise and consult with Congress is next to impossible . . . to devise a joint approach to a complicated and delicate matter of foreign policy is not within the range of normally available time and people.(21)

Senate Minority Leader Arthur Vandenberg, in a letter to a constituent, explained that the government policy concerning aspects of foreign policy was never bipartisan.(22) All of this indicates that the administration had to utilize all of its tools at hand to insure implementation of its foreign policy vehicle, NSC-68.

 

The United States Minister in Paris, Charles A. Bohlen, was a man of considerable importance to the administration in assessing Russian motives. A Russian specialist, Mr. Bohlen was returned to Washington in March to participate in preparation of the state-defense study. His assessment of the conclusions reached in NSC-68 was, "they were unchallengeable." But he believed the fundamental design of the Kremlin, world domination, was overstated. Such a premise, he contended, led to the conclusion that war is inevitable. Bohlen felt it would be more correct to state that the Soviet fundamental design was maintenance of the regime in the country and extension throughout the world to a degree possible without incurring risks to the internal regime. He felt there was too much emphasis on the atomic bomb, both militarily and politically. Furthermore, he asked for a detailed description of what would be needed in the political, economic, and military fields to enhance the United States' chance of success in the cold war. He emphasized that conventional war strength, especially in defensive weapons, be the focus of the military buildup. This would reduce the risk of provocation, counter Soviet propaganda against United States offensive weapons, require smaller armies and consequently strain the economy less. On the issue of cost he was candid: there was no way the report's recommendations for huge increases in military spending would be adopted by Congress.(23)

 

Mr. Bohlen's call for a reduction in military expenditures was also the main tenet of Assistant Secretary of State Edward W. Barett, who proclaimed that the draft summary "points to a gigantic armament race, a huge buildup of conventional arms that quickly become obsolescent, a greatly expanded military establishment in being."  As a result, he continued, "A vast opposition among informed people . . . the public would rapidly tire of such an effort. In the absence of real and continuing crises a dictatorship can unquestionably out-last a democracy in a conventional arms race." To counter this expected resistance he explained the need to time the announcement to the public of the program to coincide with the "right atmosphere," a full buildup of public awareness to the problem. He emphasized that not much time should pass between the public awareness and the setting forth of the government program to solve the problem.(24)

 

The concern voiced by the Assistant Secretaries centering on the necessary military budget was a point that Secretary Acheson agreed with. Yet, in his thinking a dichotomy existed: on one hand there was practically no expectation that the spending levels would ever be approved. On the other, the word "afford" struck him as silly; the one thing no nation could afford was an insufficient defense. Therefore, it bordered on insanity for governments to adjust military requirements to the budget rather than the other way around.(25) Secretary Acheson hoped a medium between these two extremes could be reached. So did President Truman, who believed that the defense program outlined in NSC-68, "definitely was not as large in scope as some people seemed to think.(26) Nevertheless, Presidential concern over this issue was established in a series of speeches from early May to June in which he called for an increased military budget.(27)

 

With Assistant Secretary Barett's memorandum, the administration had completed a review of the NSC-68 draft from two separate source areas, the review group of special consultants and certain key Assistant Secretaries in the State Department. It had received solid suggestions for policy rethinking in most areas and for taking a more flexible position. But on April 14, 1950, unaffected and unchanged by all of the criticisms, National Security Council Report number sixty-eight was released.

 

Two days prior, the President requested the NSC to provide him with further information on the implications of the conclusions of NSC_68. He was anxious that the Council give him "a clearer indication of the programs . . . including estimates of the probable cost." In particular, he wanted the Council to consult the Economic Cooperation Administrator, the Director of the Bureau of the Budget, and the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.(28) The Ad-Hoc Committee on NSC-68 was established on April 20, 1950. It would be the third area of input to the administration.

 

The administration, pleased with the Council's work on NSC-68, was looking to its implementation and wanted the Ad-Hoc Committee to provide helpful information. A perusal of the three main considerations of the Committee supports this thesis: timing, implications of NSC-68, and the formulation of the programs under NSC-68. The President and his staff were moving at an accelerated pace toward the establishment of their new foreign policy program. They soon would be jolted.(29)

 

On May 8, the Deputy Chief of the Bureau of the Budget, William F. Schaub, addressed a memorandum to the Executive Secretary of the NSC, James S. Lay, Jr. The memo, per the President's directive of April 12, contained the Bureau's comments on NSC-68. The general conclusion was:

No cause of action is without risks, but the risks in this proposed course are not adequately considered. The type of military program seemingly implied . . . most certainly raises serious questions. This is even more true of the document as a whole which appears basically, despite general statements in other directions, to point down the road of principal reliance on military force which can only grow in its demand over time, as well as scarcely fail to lose the cold war.(30)

 

On the same day, while trying to internalize the response of the Bureau of the Budget, Mr. Lay received the comments of the Council of Economic Advisors from Mr. Hamilton Q. Dearburn. The council raised three basic questions:

1. The adequacy of the intelligence data and analysis on which rested the conclusions as to the current status of, and trends in, the relative strength of the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

2. The degree to which the policy conclusions of NSC-68 are best adopted to remedy the deficiencies disclosed by analysis.

3. The best programs, and their cost and economic considerations, for implementing these policy conclusions, or alternative policy conclusions.(31)

 

Later in the month, the National Security Resources Board detailed an estimate of all the costs needed to implement NSC-68. It would be extremely expensive, especially in light of the proposed impending military conflict with the Soviet Union.(32)

 

These reports finally resulted in a reaction within the administration. The Undersecretary Advisory Committee, composed of certain principal officers of the State Department, and used to provide high level guidance on major foreign policy problems, met on June 6. The committee opined that NSC-68

should concentrate on the political, psychological and defensive mechanisms to prevent dropping of bombs and an outbreak of war. We must proceed with the assumption that we cannot do everything and should concentrate only on those things which set the above pattern. We must reject the idea that we are fighting a war tomorrow because when planning is done with that assumption, the inevitable result will be to make that assumption come true.(33)

 

The Truman Administration realized that the political ideology expressed in NSC-68 might be too idealistic and started to move toward a more realistic, pragmatic solution of foreign policy issues. Whether the administration made this move to facilitate the passage of the policy package or because of an actual shift in their perceptions of alternate solutions of the problem they confronted will never be known.

 

On June 24, 1950 the communist forces of North Korea, with Stalin's approval, attacked across the 38th parallel invading South Korea--a nation the United States was committed to support.(34) For the administration, American national security now seemed to demand the adaptation and rapid implementation of NSC-68.(35) The Korean War confirmed the analysis and conclusions of NSC-68 and as a result provided a carte blanche for it. It is ironic that the very kind of aggression against which NSC-68 was designed to function would make possible its implementation. Or, as Secretary Acheson succinctly stated, "Korea moved a great many things from the realm of theory into the realm of actuality and urgency."(36)

 

***

Dr. Benedicks, a former president of the Florida Conference of Teachers of History and now the permanent treasurer of the FCH, in 1989 received his PhD from Florida State University in U. S. diplomatic history. He recently published an essay, "Building Better Bridges," in the Organization of American Historians' Newsletter. Dr. Benedicks has taught at Tallahassee Community College for nine years.

 

ENDNOTES

1. Alexander DeConde, A History of American Foreign Policy, Vol. 2: 1900 to the Present, 3rd ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's and Sons, 1978), 243.

2. Harold F. Gosness, Truman's Crises: A Political Biography of Harry S Truman (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980). 437.

3. Gaddis Smith, The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, Vol. 16: Dean G. Acheson (New York: Cooper Square, Inc., 1972), 149-50.

4. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, Vol. 1: National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1977), 9.

5. 5.George F. Kennan, "Is War with Russia Inevitable, Five Solid Arguments for Peace," Ihe Department of State Bulletin 22 (Feb. 20, 1950): 267-71, 303.

6. Smith, American Secretaries, 154.

7. D. C. Acheson and D. S. Mclellen, eds., Among Friends: Personal Letters of Dean Acheson (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1980),157; Sam Postbrief, "Departure from Incrimentalism in U.S. Strategic Planning: The Origins of NSC-68," Naval War College Review (Apr./May 1980): 34-57.

8. Foreign Relations, 1: 111, 513.

9. Ibid., 234-92.

10. Public Papers of the Presidents, Harry S. Truman, 1950 [hereafter cited as Public Papers, HST] (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1963), 2-11.

11. Foreign Relations, 1: 168-292.

12. Ibid., 1: n.7, 169.

13..Ibid., 1: 210.

14. Ibid., 1: 213-14.

15. Ibid., 1: 216-17.

16. Ibid., 1: 218-19.

17. Postbrief, "Departure from Incrementalism," 49.

18. Foreign Relations, 1: 220.

19. Public Papers, HST, 11-275; Smith, American Secretaries, 161, 163, 165.

20.Postbrief, "Departure from Incrementalism," 51.

21. Smith, American Secretaries, 148.

22. A. H. Vandenberg, The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg (Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Co., 1952), 453.

23. Foreign Relations, 1: 271-75.

24. Ibid., 1: 225-26.

25. David S. McClellan, Dean Acheson: State Department Years (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1976), 272; Smith, American Secretaries, 162.

26. James I. Matray, "America's Reluctant Crusade: Truman's Commitment of Combat Troops in the Korean War," Historian (May 1980), 441.

27. Public Papers, HST, 297, 445, 453.

28. Foreign Relations, 1: 235.

29. Ibid., 1: 297.

30. Ibid., 1: 298-306.

31. Ibid., 1: 306-11.

32. Ibid., 1: 316-23.

33.Ibid., 1: 323_24.

34. Alan Cooperman, "Cold War," Tallahassee Democrat, Jan. 14, 1993.

35. Matray, "America's Reluctant Crusade," 454.

36. Ibid.

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