Trachtenberg, Marc A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. ORBIS v39, n3 (Summer, 1995):439 (17 pages). Pub type: Review [Long Display] IAC.MAGS.17311156
COPYRIGHT Foreign Policy Research Institute 1995
Melvyn Leffler's A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the
Truman
Administration, and the Cold War is a remarkable piece of work. The
book's sweep
is encyclopedic: it covers both military and foreign policy for the
entire
period from 1945 to January 1953, and deals systematically with
American policy
in all the important areas of the world - eastern and western
Europe, the
Mediterranean, the Middle East, and the Far East as well. The book
is based on a
vast amount of archival research, cited in over a hundred pages of
notes, and on
a large number of published works, listed in a thirty-page
bibliography. It is
all pulled together by one overarching theme. Leffler's goal
throughout the book
is to describe and analyze a way of thinking - focused directly and
overtly on
power - which in his view lay at the heart of American policy in
this period.
But the book is more than just a study of U.S. national security
policy. Leffler
also wants to explain the coming of the cold war, and that is what I
focus on
here. What is important about his interpretation of the cold war is
that he is
not fundamentally concerned with blaming either side for the
conflict. He does
have certain judgments to make, but these relate not to the core of
policy but
rather to what were in the final analysis fairly secondary issues.
The
Americans, he thinks, might have gone too far with their policies,
especially in
extending the conflict to the Third World. But their course of
action was at its
heart shaped by basic security considerations, and the same was true
of the
corresponding Soviet policy. When one side pursued its security
interests,
however, the other side felt threatened. Neither sought to hurt the
other, but
both sides were more or less trapped: the rival's pursuit of
security was seen
as menacing, and actions taken by the adversary in pursuit of that
goal simply
underscored the need for a tough security policy of one's own. The
result was a
"spiraling cycle of mistrust," and it was this dynamic that lay at
the heart of
the cold war (p. 98-99).(1)
Thus Leffler's theory of the cold war pivots on the idea that the
conflict was
in essence a product of the "security dilemma," the idea that
international
tension may be largely rooted in the clash of essentially defensive,
security-oriented policies. Indeed, Leffler makes explicit use of
this political
science concept. The idea runs like a thread throughout his
analysis.
And in fact it takes a purer form in his conclusion than it had
earlier in the
book, as though in the process of grappling with the problem of the
cold war
Leffler became increasingly convinced of the explanatory power of
this concept.
Toward the beginning of the book, he stresses the role of
psychological factors
in driving the security dilemma, and again he relies explicitly on
the work of
the leading political science theorists in this area.(2) American
officials, he
argues, "were unable to see the extent to which the position and
power of their
own country made it a potential menace to others" (p. 98). Their
perceptions
were shaped by certain well-known cognitive biases: they focused on
the more
menacing aspects of Soviet behavior and "dismissed the more
favorable signs" (p.
51). To reduce "cognitive dissonance," complex situations had to be
simplified,
and this was done by "attributing to the Russians the most
malevolent of motives
and the most sinister of goals and by denying that their grievances
had any
legitimacy" (p. 121). The result was a policy that sought to "deter
and contain
rather than reassure the enemy" - a policy which Leffler views as
one of the key
elements generating the cold war (pp. 121, 140). The spiral of
mistrust is thus
seen in this part of the book as fueled largely by phenomena of a
psychological
nature, and the implication is that the problem was mainly in
people's minds -
that if only officials had seen things more realistically, the
spiral might have
been kept under control. The great powers might have been able, if
not to escape
from the security dilemma entirely, then at least to keep the
problems it
generated within narrower bounds.(3)
Later on, however, Leffler sees the security dilemma dynamic as more
deeply
rooted in the fundamental realities of the international political
system.
Misperception may still have played a role on the margin, but it no
longer lay
at the heart of the problem. In 1947, in his view, "U.S. officials
were
altogether aware that their initiatives would antagonize the
Soviets, intensify
the emerging rivalry, and probably culminate in the division of
Germany and of
Europe. Their intent was not to provoke the Kremlin, but they
recognized that
this result would be the logical consequence of their actions" (p.
504).(4)
But whatever twist Leffler gives the theory, it is clear that the
security
dilemma plays a central role in his interpretation of the cold war.
The security
dilemma approach in general does not see international politics in
terms of
aggressors and defenders. Instead, it regards states as primarily
interested in
security - that is, in an essentially defensive goal. The problem is
that, to
pursue that goal, states sometimes must adopt aggressive strategies
which oblige
rivals, perhaps reluctantly, to take a tougher line themselves. Both
sides are
trapped by the dynamics of the situation; the basic problem (as
A.J.P. Taylor
once said in a somewhat different context) is political and not
moral; the
"security dilemma" interpretation of the cold war is a story (to
paraphrase
Taylor again) without heroes, and perhaps even without villains. And
indeed in
Leffler's account, neither side comes across as particularly
aggressive, nor,
for that matter, as entirely without fault. Certainly, he is not out
"to
whitewash Soviet behavior" (p. 134); "graywash" would in fact be a
better term.
Leffler's picture of American policy is also painted in shades of
gray. In
toughening their line, he argues, the Americans were not essentially
reacting to
Soviet aggressiveness, as the old orthodox view would have it. Their
policy was
instead rooted in a more far-ranging set of fears - "socioeconomic
instability,
political upheaval, vacuums of power, decolonization" - and the
emerging
anti-Soviet thrust of American policy is somehow to be understood as
a response
to those deep-seated concerns (pp. 51-52).(5) The U.S. government
Leffler
thinks, should not have allowed its policy to move so sharply in
that
anti-Soviet direction. American leaders should have taken a more
objective view
of Soviet behavior, a view that recognized Soviet restraint, at
least outside
"the periphery of their armies of occupation." They should have
"displayed more
tolerance for risk," and tried harder to "reassure and placate" the
Russians
instead of just seeking to "contain and deter" them (p. 99).
All this - this general picture and this set of judgments - is based
on certain
fundamental claims about the balance of power throughout this whole
period. The
idea that the Soviets were relatively restrained is linked to the
assumption
that they were also relatively weak. And indeed if they were as weak
as Leffler
says, then they had to be moderate (p. 102). Similarly, the notion
that the
United States held the initiative - that U.S. policy was not
essentially
reactive, but was rooted in the Americans' attempt "to perpetuate
their nation's
preponderant position in the world political system" - is also based
on
assumptions about the "overwhelming power of the United States" (pp.
55, 99).(6)
His judgments follow from the same set of assumptions: America was
so strong
that she could have afforded to be moderate, and could have settled
for
something less than "preponderance" (p. 99).
These are the aspects of Leffler's argument that I want to focus on
here. The
following sections will deal first with his picture of American and
Soviet
policy, then with his assumptions about the dynamics of U.S.-Soviet
interaction,
and finally with his claims about the nature of the global balance
of power.
Soviet Policy and American Policy
One of the most striking features of Leffler's book is his portrayal
of both
Soviet and American policy. American officials, in his view, took
the initiative
in pressing for action that would "perpetuate their nation's
preponderant
position in the international system." The Americans, he says, were
not
essentially reacting to "unrelenting Soviet pressure"; the
anti-Soviet
interpretation of international developments was instead something
the American
government simply "latched onto" as a way of rationalizing its
policies (pp.
51-52, 55, 100).
The proof that American policy was not essentially reactive is that
the Soviets,
in Leffler's view, were not behaving in a particularly threatening
manner. They
wanted to dominate eastern Europe, of course, but this was something
the
Americans felt they could live with.(7) The question is whether the
Soviets
posed a threat beyond this area. American officials at the time
certainly argued
that Soviet policy was aggressive, and charges about Soviet pressure
on Turkey
and Iran were key counts in Truman's indictment of Soviet behavior
at the very
beginning of the cold war in January 1946.(8) But Leffler takes
issue with these
charges, and a major part of his argument turns on the claim that
there was
nothing particularly aggressive about Soviet policy in the Middle
East in
1945-46.
The Turkish Straits affair of 1945-46 plays an important role in
Leffler's
analysis, and in fact over the years he has devoted a good deal of
attention to
this subject.(9) His basic claim in these writings is that Soviet
policy on
Turkey was relatively benign. In his view, the Soviets in 1945 "had
not engaged
in any threats or intimidation" directed at the Turks; "American
fears" in 1946,
he says, "did not stem from aggressive Soviet moves against Turkey.
The Soviets
had done little more than send a diplomatic note" (pp. 78, 124). The
Americans
took a tough line following the receipt of this note; in fact,
Truman spoke as
if war were a distinct possibility.(10) Was this a wild
overreaction? Leffler's
account leaves the impression that the Soviet threat was at best a
figment of
the Americans' rather fevered imagination; at worst, it was
artificially
conjured up to justify policies that had little to do with
counteracting direct
Soviet pressure.(11)
Is Leffler correct in saying that the Soviets Were not pursuing a
policy of
intimidation directed against Turkey, aimed in particular at getting
the Turks
to agree to Soviet military bases on the Straits? Certainly the
Soviets wanted
bases there and had brought up the issue with Turkey shortly before
the Potsdam
conference. The question was then discussed at length at Potsdam in
July 1945,
and was raised repeatedly in late 1945 and 1946.(12) American and
British
officials spoke of Soviet "pressure" and "demands," and it is quite
clear from
the evidence that the Russians were doing more than making a simple
request that
the Turks were free to turn down.
In fact, the Soviet government kept bringing up the issue. The Turks
made it
clear they did not want any Soviet bases on their territory, but the
Russians
would not take "no" for an answer. Leffler stresses the point that
at the end of
an interview in April 1946 with the American ambassador in Moscow,
Stalin
indicated that "he might be satisfied with much less than a base,"
but even
after making this "concession," the Soviets kept asking the Turks to
grant them
base rights.(13)
Certainly an invasion of Turkey was never imminent, and it is also
clear that
the Soviets never issued an ultimatum. Leffler is correct to stress
these
points. But pressure can be exerted even if an attack is not
imminent, and a
policy can be menacing even in the absence of blunt and overt
threats. The road
to war may be long, but any movement down that road, any increase in
political
tension, is bound to generate anxiety, given what is at stake. This
is
particularly true when power relations are as lopsided as they were
between
Russia and Turkey after World War II. Given that imbalance, an
insistent
"request" could not be dismissed as innocuous: Soviet manipulation
of tensions -
the USSR's refusal to take "no" for an answer - clearly had
political meaning.
And the Soviets were certainly manipulating tensions. They were
conducting a
press and radio campaign against Turkey, and, as Leffler recognizes,
there were
troop movements and other preparations of a military nature that
caused concern
about Russian intentions in the region (p. 78).(14) These moves were
of course
to be understood in the context of what was going on in the
diplomatic area. At
Potsdam the Soviets had staked out a claim to control of the
Straits, declaring
it to be a basic strategic interest, equivalent to the American
interest in the
Panama Canal or the British interest in Suez. The implication here
was that they
had the right to take control of the area, no matter how the Turks
felt about
the idea.(15)
And there were other, more minor, diplomatic straws in the wind that
fit in with
the general idea that Soviet power was being brought to bear on this
issue. In
late 1945, the Soviets claimed (falsely) that their 1921 treaty with
Turkey had
been negotiated "under duress," suggesting that they no longer felt
bound by it,
and thus vaguely hinting that they might feel free to change the
border with
Turkey established by this treaty, through force if necessary.(16)
In February
1946, moreover, the Soviet ambassador in Turkey characterized the
Soviet
interest in the Straits as "vital," which in diplomatic parlance
means the sort
of interest over which one is willing to go to war.(17)
All this tended to confirm certain general impressions: that in
asking for bases
on the Straits, the Soviets were not just making a simple request
that the Turks
were free to reject, but that an attempt at what might fairly be
called
"intimidation" was in fact going on. The general point is quite
familiar from
everyday life. Suppose a teenager repeatedly asks a much smaller boy
for money,
and the "request" is accompanied by insults as the teenager fondles
his knife.
Even if no overt threat is made, can there be any doubt about what
is going on?
Leffler's handling of the Turkish affair is a good example of the
way Soviet
policy is treated in the book. Evidence of Soviet pressure or
aggressiveness is
played down, while the Americans are portrayed as far more assertive
than they
in fact were. Two examples of this are particularly striking: his
account of
American policy on Italy at the beginning of 1948, and his picture
of American
policy on Korea in the three-year period prior to the outbreak of
the war there
in June 1950.
On Italy, Leffler has the United States deciding to use military
force to
prevent that country "from falling under Soviet domination," and his
text
strongly implies that this was true even if a Communist government
came to power
legally in Rome (pp. 195-96).(18) But the evidence - even the
evidence to which
Leffler himself refers - clearly points in the opposite direction.
NSC 1/2 of February 10, 1948, one of the documents he cites in this
context, was
the basic U.S. policy document on Italy at this time. It said
specifically that
U.S. forces were not to intervene "in a civil conflict of an
internal nature in
Italy." The only exception was that if an illegal Communist
government gained
control of the Italian mainland, the United States, with the consent
of the
legal government, could send forces to Sicily and Sardinia. If the
Communists
came to power by legal means, a follow-on document called for a U.S.
military
buildup, particularly in the Mediterranean, as well as other
measures; but it
did not call for armed intervention in Italy to get rid of the
regime.(19)
Leffler says top American officials - George Marshall, Robert
Lovett, and George
Kennan - "were willing to take risks because they wagered that
Soviet leaders so
much wanted to avoid sliding into a war that they would constrain
local
Communists" in Italy (p. 196). But it is hard to see how the
Americans were in
any way threatening the Soviets with moves that might result in war.
Kennan and
the others proposed to react to a seizure of power by the Communists
in Italy by
building up American power in the region. Because the USSR would
find this
prospect unpleasant, they thought that the specter of an American
buildup might
act as a deterrent.(20) But this is a far cry from implying that
they had
decided to run a major risk of general war. And the overall
impression one gets
from reading the published documents and the relevant section in the
official
Joint Chiefs of Staff history on the period is that American leaders
were far
more cautious, and more sensitive to their own weakness, than
Leffler portrays
them as being.(21)
The same general point emerges, with perhaps even greater force,
from an
analysis of Leffler's treatment of U.S. policy on Korea. In his
chapter on the
1946-47 period, he recognizes that top War Department officials
"wanted to
withdraw" from Korea, but says their views "did not prevail," and
that the
administration as a whole "felt it had to hold southern Korea." In
the chapter
on 1947-48, he has American officials digging "in their heels in
Korea," and
concludes the section by stating that "the U.S. commitment was far
from over"
(pp. 167-68, 253).
To support his conclusion that the Truman administration "felt it
had to hold
southern Korea," Leffler cites William Stueck's The Road to
Confrontation, which
is indeed a first-rate study of American policy on Korea and China
in the period
before June 1950. Stueck's basic picture, however, is not of an
America
fundamentally committed to South Korea. He portrays U.S. policy as
"an
increasingly desperate juggling act between conflicting pressures."
The basic
problem U.S. leaders faced, according to Stueck, was "how to arrange
a graceful
withdrawal from an awkward entanglement." The Americans would of
course have
liked to liquidate their commitment (in the words of one key
document) "without
abandoning Korea to Soviet domination." The question was whether
this was
possible, and top officials ultimately decided that it probably was
not: "Army
planners now conceded that the United States might eventually have
to accept
Communist domination of Korea, and the State Department agreed."
This conclusion
was reached at an important meeting held in September 1947. It was
decided,
Stueck goes on, quoting the record of the meeting, that "'ultimately
the U.S.
position in Korea is untenable even with expenditure of considerable
. . . money
and effort.' The United States, however, could not merely 'scuttle
and run.' The
Truman administration should seek 'a settlement . . . which would
enable the
U.S. to withdraw . . . as soon as possible with the minimum of bad
effects.'" By
late September, Stueck concludes, "a consensus had emerged among
State and
Defense planners in favor of a graceful withdrawal from Korea."(22)
Even so, Stueck argues, American officials thought that there was a
certain
chance, although not a very good one, that South Korea might
"survive as an
independent, non-Communist state." Having it come into being under
U.N. auspices
- the strategy the Americans chose to pursue - would give it a
certain
international legitimacy and thus increase its chances of survival.
The U.S.
government took various additional minor steps to indicate a
continuing interest
in Korea so as to improve the prospects for South Korea's survival,
but on the
whole, Stueck says, U.S. actions "did not fall into a consistent
pattern that
conveyed a deep American commitment." In January 1950, Secretary of
State Dean
Acheson placed South Korea outside America's defense perimeter (in a
famous
speech whose significance Leffler minimizes, but which the North
Koreans
evidently took seriously); and a few months later, when Senator Tom
Connally,
the Democrat who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
said that South
Korea might have to be abandoned if it were overrun, the
administration issued
only a "feeble" response.(23)
All this, of course, is rather different from the picture that
emerges from
Leffler's account. A casual reader of A Preponderance of Power would
scarcely
get the impression that the troop withdrawal from Korea had any
political
meaning, or even that the withdrawal had been completed by the
middle of 1949.
The minor rear-guard actions that were taken to indicate continuing
American
interest, including the decision to postpone the troop withdrawal
for a few
months, loom much larger in importance. All this supports a picture
of an
America determined to do whatever was necessary to keep the
Communists at bay.
One is particularly struck by Leffler's accounts of the Turkish,
Italian, and
Korean episodes, but these are by no means atypical examples, and
the book's
general picture of both U.S. and Soviet policy is somewhat skewed.
The Soviets
are portrayed as less aggressive than they in fact were, while the
assertiveness
of American policy, in the late 1940s at least, is rather
exaggerated. Leffler's
readiness to take American cold war rhetoric at face value - and he
devotes an
extraordinary amount of attention to such effusions as the
Clifford-Elsey report
of 1946 - reflects the same general tendency to exaggerate the
anti-Soviet
thrust of American policy in this period. It is not that Leffler
makes the
Americans into devils, or the Soviets into angels. He is critical of
U.S.
policy, but in the final analysis not that critical, and he is by no
means an
apologist for Soviet policy. But the USSR and the United States are
placed on
the same moral plane. The logic of power is what is crucial, and it
works the
same way for both countries.
The Cold War Dynamic
Given a Soviet and an American policy of the sort Leffler portrays,
how do we
get to the cold war? The author is a firm believer in the spiral
model. "Neither
the Americans nor the Soviets sought to harm the other in 1945," he
says. "But
each side, in pursuit of its security interests, took steps that
aroused the
other's apprehensions. Moreover, the protests that each country's
actions evoked
from the other fueled the cycle of distrust as neither could
comprehend the
fears of the other, perceiving its own actions as defensive." And
this belief is
linked to a basic judgment. The Americans should have shown "more
tolerance for
risk"; that was the only way the ratcheting up of tension could have
been
prevented. The problem was that the United States generally "chose
to contain
and deter the Russians rather than to reassure and placate them,
thereby
accentuating possibilities for a spiraling cycle of mistrust" - a
prudent policy
perhaps, but probably not a wise one (p. 99).(24)
So Leffler's most fundamental conclusions turn on basic assumptions
about the
nature of international interaction. But does the evidence in the
book really
support the spiral interpretation? One is struck first of all by the
degree to
which Leffler's picture of Soviet policy points in the opposite
direction. His
Stalin "is anything but a large risk-taker" in international affairs
(p. 510).
He is easily deterred, extremely cautious, and respectful of power
realities. He
is not the sort who reacts to hostile American action by taking the
kinds of
counter-measures that might lead eventually to armed conflict.
Tensions might
increase, but he is not about to let this spiral get out of control.
He is in
fact terrified of the United States.(25) Leffler's Stalin is so
cautious that he
is afraid to do things that the real Stalin actually did: "He
grasped that, for
the indefinite future, the correlations of strength were
incalculably in
America's favor. Provocative action on his part, moreover, might
accentuate
American suspicions, trigger the security dilemma, and ensconce
American power
on his immediate periphery: in southern Korea, northern China,
Japan, Iran or
Turkey, and, of course, western Germany" (p. 102).(26) Leffler's
Stalin, in
other words, is neither strong enough nor careless enough to allow
himself to be
drawn into an unconstrained spiral of conflict.
Nor does the analysis of key historical episodes from the early cold
war years
lend much support to the spiral interpretation. The Turkish Straits
affair of
1945-46 is once again worth considering closely. Leffler, in one of
his earlier
writings, cites various indicators of growing Soviet moderation in
this affair,
which he takes as proving that the Russians were not pursuing a
policy of
"intimidation" against Turkey in 1946, thus implying that the
Americans were
overreacting by taking an increasingly tough anti-Soviet line in the
dispute. He
refers in particular to the dropping of the Soviet claim for
territory in
eastern Turkey, and to the fact that the Soviet note of August 1946
was viewed
by the Turks as "a less formidable blow than expected." He also
points out that
the Russian note was not accompanied by Soviet troop movements, and
that a
follow-on note the next month was even milder.(27)
Now, certainly, the Soviets were drawing in their horns as Leffler
says, but
this growing moderation came as the Americans were deepening their
involvement
in the conflict. If the Soviets were pulling back because of this
tougher
American position - and my own view is that conclusion is hard to
avoid - one
can hardly cite this Soviet moderation as proof that the tough
American policy
was unwarranted. The same point applies to the coming of the Korean
War: the
problem was not a spiralling up of conflict resulting from excessive
American
involvement there, but quite the opposite: the signals - as it
turned out, the
false signals - given by the American policy of disengagement.(28)
The particular episode where Leffler applies the spiral model most
directly is
the dispute over Iran in 1945-46, and yet even here one is struck by
how weak
the evidence is. America, Russia, and Britain had occupied Iran
during the war,
but had agreed to evacuate the country no later than six months
after the end of
hostilities. The Soviets repeatedly promised to comply with the
agreement, but
by early 1946 it became increasingly clear that they were not going
to do so.
They were protecting a left-wing separatist regime that had taken
power in the
northern area occupied by their troops. To Truman this was an
"outrage if I ever
saw one,"(29) and the old conventional interpretation is that this
episode
played a key role in the emergence of the sharp anti-Soviet policy
in the United
States at the beginning of 1946.
To Leffler, however, the Soviet intervention, though neither legal
nor moral,
was probably defensive in nature. The Western powers were developing
bases in
the Middle East, especially at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. These bases,
he argues,
could have served as a springboard for a U.S. attack on Soviet oil
fields and
refineries. The Russians were looking for "defense in depth." "The
Soviets no
less than the Americans and the British," he argues, "had to think
about
configurations of power and plans for future war should the great
alliance fall
apart." The USSR was certainly trying to improve its strategic
position in the
Middle East, but this was really no different from what the United
States was
doing in this area at the time. The actions being taken by the two
sides "did
not mean that Washington or Moscow or London sought or even expected
a showdown.
Each government was probably acting defensively, but the cumulative
effect, as
the political scientist Fred Lawson correctly argues, was to trigger
a spiraling
crisis of misperception and mistrust" (pp. 80-81).
There may be some substance to this theory, but it is really only a
theory, a
point that Lawson openly admits and that is also suggested by
Leffler's
tentative phrasing. Before the theory can be accepted, it certainly
needs to be
supported by a good deal more evidence than Leffler and Lawson
provide. Their
most important piece of evidence is a passage from a March 1946
Joint Chiefs of
Staff document: "Soviet pressure in the Middle East has for its
primary
objective the protection of the vital Ploesti, Kharkov and Baku
areas."(30) But
evidence of this sort is always a two-edged sword, because it
suggests that
American official circles were sensitive to the security dilemma
aspect of the
problem; and as Leffler is well aware, the security dilemma is most
acute when
this sort of sensitivity is absent - that is, when the other side's
actions are
misperceived as simply hostile and aggressive. To support his view
that Soviet
policy is not to be understood as just unrelentingly hostile,
Leffler frequently
cites American officials taking a similar, balanced view of Soviet
behavior. But
the more effectively he makes his case in this way, the more he
undermines his
basic contention that the U.S. government did in fact view the
Soviet threat in
such simple black-and-white terms.(31)
The basic point, here, however, is that the mere fact that an
American document
interpreted Soviet policy along these lines does not in itself prove
that the
USSR was indeed motivated by essentially defensive concerns. The
Joint Chiefs of
Staff document is probably more interesting as a reflection of the
way
professional military officers view the world than as an indicator
of Soviet
intentions. It is certainly odd that no evidence is given of Soviet
officials,
in conversation with American or British representatives, linking
their policy
in Iran or Turkey to what the West was doing in Dhahran or elsewhere
in the
region. Even a simple juxtaposition of these two issues would be
suggestive.
Instead, when Stalin was challenged on this subject in late 1945, he
gave what
Byrnes called "the weakest excuse I ever heard him make" for Soviet
behavior: he
needed to protect the Soviet oil fields around Baku from Iranian
saboteurs.(32)
So putting all this together, the Iranian case really does not
provide much
support for the spiral model. And yet this was the case where the
spiral
argument was made most explicitly.
The Military Balance
Leffler's focus is on power. You can see it in the book's title, and
if you look
up "power" in the index, you find nine lines of references. And the
concept of
power - ultimately war-making power - lies at the heart of Leffler's
analysis.
He believes that the United States possessed overwhelming power
throughout this
period, and his account of both Soviet and American policy is rooted
in that
belief. The Soviets were cautious because they were weak; the
Americans could be
assertive only because they were strong. And this belief also
underpins
Leffler's most important judgments. The Americans should have
"displayed more
tolerance for risk," they should have sought more to reassure rather
than to
deter, because they possessed such "overwhelming power" (p. 99).
There are major problems with this key part of Leffler's analysis,
but before
examining his assumptions in this area, one point needs to be
stressed, and this
is that Leffler understands military realities far better than most
historians.
People used to assume, a little naively perhaps, that the period of
America's
nuclear monopoly was almost by definition a period of American
military
preeminence. But the pendulum then swung in the opposite direction
after the
basic facts began to come out about the small size of the U.S.
atomic arsenal in
the late 1940s, the limited power of the early atomic bombs, and the
problems of
delivering an effective attack. At this point, the prevailing
argument was that
the atomic bomb posed a "hollow threat," that U.S. officials
mistakenly believed
it was a "winning weapon," whereas in reality the nuclear monopoly
was no trump
card at all.
But these conclusions were fundamentally mistaken, and Leffler
understands why.
They were based on a judgment about the limited effects of an
initial atomic
attack, which would indeed (as Bernard Brodie pointed out at the
time) do little
more than "bruise" the enemy. But precisely because an initial
attack would not
end the war, one had to consider how the great conflict would run
its course.
Both sides would mobilize and gear up for a long struggle. The
United States
would fight it, in large part, with bombs and bombers produced after
hostilities
had broken out. With a monopoly on bomb production, the Americans
could take
their time, but the Soviet economy would eventually be devastated
and Soviet
war-making power would ultimately be crippled. So the final outcome
of the war
could not be in doubt. That is where Leffler basically stops,
drawing the
conclusion that the United States possessed overwhelming power
during this
period.
As far as it goes, that argument is correct. The problem is that it
does not go
far enough. The main additional point to be made is that if general
war had
broken out in the late 1940s, America would eventually have won it,
but at
terrible cost. The nuclear monopoly meant that the United States was
able to
settle for a tripwire strategy and thus avoid an expensive
investment in ground
defense on the European continent. But that in turn meant western
Europe would
be overrun if war actually did break out. The Soviets might then try
to harness
the European economies to their own war effort, and America would
then be
obliged to bomb her own allies. This bombing, together with the
ground war,
would leave Europe devastated at the end of the conflict, so the
American
victory would be largely Pyrrhic.
This situation had major political implications. To pursue a risky
or
belligerent policy under these circumstances would put a great
strain on the
Western alliance. The continentals especially would scarcely relish
the prospect
of such a war, even if ultimate victory for the West was certain.
And the
Soviets knew all this. They knew the West would be reluctant to push
things too
far, and thus they knew that they had considerable room for
political maneuver.
So political conflicts might develop, but neither side would want to
push things
to the limit, and this was certainly reflected in both American and
Soviet
policy at the time of the Berlin Blockade of 1948-49. The balance,
in other
words, was not nearly as lopsided in favor of America as Leffler
suggests.
This rather precarious balance was broken when the Soviets exploded
their first
atomic device in the late summer of 1949. Although Leffler generally
sees both
American and Soviet policy as quite sensitive to the military
balance, his views
on the impact of the Soviet bomb are not totally clear.(33) But he
does seem to
underestimate the importance of the breaking of the American nuclear
monopoly in
late 1949. In his view, the Americans still held the upper hand in
1950. But
when I worked on this period, I was amazed to see how frightened top
U.S.
officials were. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
Omar Bradley,
told the National Security Council in November 1950 that if a third
world war
broke out, the United States might well lose. And this general sense
of weakness
shaped American policy during the early Korean War period, not just
in Korea,
but with regard to such issues as Berlin as well.(34)
The fear was that the United States could no longer take its time
and still
emerge the ultimate victor. The Soviets would try to destroy the
American
nuclear infrastructure - certainly bombs and bombers, but also
nuclear and
aircraft production facilities - just as America would try to
destroy the
corresponding target systems on the Soviet side. Success in this
part of the war
was crucial, since the side that prevailed could then go on to
destroy the
enemy's economy and war-making power as a whole. But success now
depended on the
speed and effectiveness of attack, and there was no guarantee,
especially if the
Soviets struck first, that the United States would win this race and
thus
prevail in the war.
Does Leffler's evidence support a different conclusion? He says
flatly that if
war broke out at this point, "the Kremlin could not defeat the
United States."
"The Soviets," he argues, "had fewer than 25 atomic bombs, or so it
was
estimated, and no effective means of delivering them." America, on
the other
hand, had a much larger number of bombs and the aircraft and bases
it needed to
launch an attack. "For Truman, Acheson, and their colleagues," he
concludes,
"the conclusion was inescapable: the Kremlin would try to avoid
global war, at
least for the foreseeable future" (pp. 369-70).(35)
In support of these claims, Leffler cites two CIA documents, which,
when
examined carefully, show precisely the opposite. According to these
estimates,
the Soviets were preparing for an armed conflict and might well
"deliberately
provoke" a general war in the near future. A large part of the
reason was that
the United States no longer had an effective atomic monopoly: the
Soviets were
capable of launching a nuclear attack against America, and, if they
did, even
U.S. superiority in the numbers of bombs and bombers might not be
decisive.
The first of these documents, the CIA's memorandum of August 25,
1950, on
"Soviet Preparations for Major Hostilities in 1950," stated
specifically that
the "USSR is vigorously and intensively preparing for the
possibility of direct
hostilities with the US," and reported in some detail on a whole
series of
Soviet preparations, some of which indicated that the Russians
thought war might
well break out in the near future. Only in the nuclear area was the
USSR judged
"relatively unprepared" for major war. But even in this area, the
Soviets were
considered "capable of employing against the continental US the 25
bombs
estimated to be currently available." A nuclear attack, using TU-4
bombers (on
one-way missions) and other means "could weaken the UK and US
capacity to
retaliate." The bottom line was that "Soviet leaders would be
justified in
assuming a substantial risk of general war during the remainder of
1950, arising
either out of the prosecution of the Korean incident or out of the
initiation of
new local operations."(36)
The second CIA document Leffler cites, NIE-3 of November 15, 1950,
reached
similar conclusions. It stated specifically that "a grave danger of
general war
exists now," and that the Soviets might "deliberately provoke" a
general war
with the West at a time when in their view "the relative strength of
the USSR is
at its maximum" - a period which, in the view of the CIA analysts,
had already
begun and which would last through 1954.(37) The general tenor of
both documents
was that the United States had already entered into a period of
great peril in
its relations with the Soviet Union, and this theme was in fact
echoed in many
other documents from this period.(38)
Why are these issues important? The reason is simple: if policy is
to be
understood correctly, the strategic balance and the military
environment must
also be understood accurately. The United States was not nearly as
much in the
driver's seat as Leffler makes out, at least not until the very end
of the
Truman administration. America's freedom of maneuver was thus far
more limited
than he indicates, and the government therefore had to be more
sensitive to the
views of others than he realizes. A very powerful America could, for
example,
simply do whatever she wanted in the part of Germany she dominated.
But a
country that felt its position was a good deal more precarious, and
which felt
that it was engaged (as John McCloy put it) in a struggle it might
conceivably
lose, simply could not behave this way.
Leffler's approach, moreover, does not bring out the really
extraordinary shifts
that were taking place, particularly in the military balance. For
him, the world
of NSC 68 of mid-1950 is not fundamentally different from what had
preceded
it.(39) The makers of NSC 68 wanted to create a "preponderance of
power," but
that, according to Leffler, had in fact been the American goal all
along.(40)
One has the sense of a story being flattened. The policy ushered in
by NSC 68
really was radically different from the Truman policy of the 1940s.
The
containment policy aimed at stabilizing the status quo, but now, in
1950, the
goal became rollback, and the basic thinking became more
aggressive.(41) One of
the great puzzles in interpreting the cold war is to understand why
this shift
took place, but this will never happen unless people first realize
how
extraordinary this change in fact was.
Conclusion
A Preponderance of Power is an important book and will without
question remain
for many years the basic study of American national security policy
during the
early cold war period. But it is precisely because the book is bound
to be a
major point of departure for future work that a detailed examination
of some of
its key arguments was in order. What is the upshot of this analysis?
Perhaps the book's most striking feature is its portrayal of the
cold war as the
security dilemma in action. This is an appealing argument, not just
to political
scientists but also to historians and others who are bored by the
old debates
about cold war "revisionism" and who in any case would like to get
away from
simplistic devil theories of history. Nevertheless, it is - with one
very
important exception - unconvincing. Security interests led to
defensive
strategies, as each side "organized" its own bloc. The result,
broadly speaking,
was a division of the most important areas of the world into dearly
demarcated
spheres of influence. The de facto settlement that seemed to have
taken shape by
1949 was based on the idea that each side could do what it wanted in
its own
sphere. In such a situation, at least as far as the strategically
important
areas of the world were concerned, there was little danger of war.
The great exception to this general picture was Germany, and here
Leffler's
analysis is quite astute. The Soviets really were reacting to the
Western policy
of building up a West German state. The western zones of Germany had
to be
"organized" and tied to the West; but the creation of a West German
state tapped
into basic Soviet security concerns. The West Europeans were also
disturbed by
the policy, not least because of the possible Soviet reaction, and
insisted on
American security guarantees. Hence the demand for something like
NATO, which
the Soviets were bound to view as menacing. The top American
leaders, Leffler
says, "did not wish to threaten the Soviet Union: they sought only
to enhance
American security." But each measure they took "added to the
Kremlin's
perception of threat" (p. 219).
Leffler evidently believes that a "policy of reassurance" in Germany
would have
been better, although he can understand why risk-averse American
leaders
preferred not to go this route.(42) Perhaps the key point to make
here is that
the line between a "policy of reassurance" and a "policy of
containment and
deterrence" is a bit too sharply drawn in the book. Working out a
"comprehensive
German settlement" with the Russians was not (as Leffler implies)
the only way,
or even the best way, to implement a "policy of reassurance" in this
key area
(pp. 284, 505-6). The NATO system itself, in the form it came to
have at the end
of the Truman period, satisfied the USSR's most basic security
interest, the
constraint of German power. Indeed, this was the whole beauty of the
NATO
system: a structure designed primarily to contain Soviet power also
served,
although less overtly, as a means of keeping the Germans under
control and thus
of reassuring the Russians.
And in fact Leffler's own evidence and arguments sometimes point in
this
direction. When discussing the American government's aversion to a
general
German settlement, and its preference for an arrangement tying
western Germany
into the Western bloc, he quotes a CIA assessment approvingly: "The
CIA put the
matter succinctly: 'The real issue . . . is not the settlement of
Germany, but
the long-term control of German power'" (p. 284). Note that the
"real issue" was
not the use of German power to build an adequate counterweight to
Soviet power:
the control of Germany and not the containment of Russia was seen as
the
fundamental problem. And he returns to the issue in his conclusion.
The prospect
of a restoration of German power and independence - the creation of
a German
state "intent on territorial rectification and reunification" - was
a real
threat to European stability. The NATO system - "the retention of
Allied troops
in Germany, the establishment of supranational mechanisms of
control," and so on
- was the Western powers' way of dealing with it (p. 513). It is
hard to tell
whether, or to what extent, this was ever really appreciated by the
Russians;
or, if it was, what effect, if any, it had on their policy. Perhaps
a
realization of this sort played a key role in tipping the balance
against war in
1950-51, but we will not know until people have a chance to go
through the
Soviet archives for this period.
All of which brings me to the Final point, which is that it is
perhaps a mistake
to focus historical work in this area too narrowly on the question
of the
origins of the cold war. The more important question is how a stable
peace came
to the world of the great powers during the cold war period. If the
NATO system
played a key role in stabilizing international politics, and if the
cold war in
turn played a fundamental role in bringing that system into being,
then maybe
the cold war was an essential part of the process whereby the peace
took shape.
In other words, the cold war may not have been the problem, but
rather an
important part of the solution.
1 See also, Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National
Security, the
Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University
Press, 1992), pp. 81, 121, 219, 504, 506-11.
2 See Leffler, Preponderance, pp. 51-52, 98, 121.
3 Ibid., pp. 51-52, 99.
4 See also, ibid., p. 219.
5 Ibid., pp. 100, 110, 124.
6 See also, ibid., p. 96.
7 Ibid., pp. 54, 99.
8 The key document bearing on Truman's state of mind at this point
is his famous
Jan. 5, 1946, letter-memorandum to Secretary of State James F.
Byrnes. For the
text, see Harry S Truman, Year of Decisions, vol. 1 of Memoirs
(Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, 1955), pp. 551-52. Although the letter was
evidently never sent
or even read to Byrnes, it is a genuine document and certainly
captures the
spirit of Truman's thinking at the time. For an analysis, see Robert
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),
pp. 157-65.
9 Leffler first dealt with the issue in a long review of Bruce
Kuniholm's book
The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East. See Melvyn Leffler,
"From Cold War
to Cold War in the Near East," Reviews in American History, Mar.
1981, pp.
124-28. He addressed the subject again in a rather detailed exchange
with
Kuniholm in 1985. See Melvyn Leffler, "The American Conception of
National
Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945-48," The American
Historical
Review, April 1984, pp. 346-81, especially p. 368. This article is
followed in
the same issue by Kuniholm's "Comment," pp. 385-90, and Leffler's
"Reply," pp.
391-400. See especially, pp. 394-95. The following year, Leffler
published
another article on the subject, "Strategy, Diplomacy, and the Cold
War: The
United States, Turkey, and NATO, 1945-1952," Journal of American
History, Mar.
1985. And, of course, the issue receives a good deal of attention in
Leffler's
Preponderance.
10 Acheson to Byrnes, Aug. 15, 1946, in U.S. Department of State,
Foreign
Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS], 1946, vol. 7, pp.
840-42. By
Aug. 20, Truman's position had become known to the British and thus,
one
assumes, to the Soviets as well. Acheson memorandum, Aug. 20, 1946,
FRUS, 1946,
vol. 7, pp. 849-50.
11 See Leffler, Preponderance, pp. 124-25, 551 (n. 117).
12 See U.S. Department of State, FRUS, 1945: The Conference of
Berlin (The
Potsdam Conference), vol. 1, pp. 1017-22, 1030-31; and, ibid., vol.
2,
especially pp. 256-60, 301-5, 365-67. For developments after
Potsdam, see also,
FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, pp. 1236-93; and, FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, pp.
801-99. See also,
Bruce Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great
Power
Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey, and Greece (Princeton, NJ.:
Princeton
University Press, 1980), pp. 255-70, 355-73.
13 Leffler, "Reply," p. 395; Wilson to Byrnes, Mar. 1 and June 26,
1946, FRUS,
1946, vol. 7, pp. 817-18, 825-27. Given this context, the provision
in the
Soviet note to Turkey of Aug. 7, 1946, proposing a joint defense of
the Straits,
is also to be interpreted as a "request" for base rights. Ibid., p.
829.
14 See also, Leffler, "From Cold War to Cold War," p. 127. On Soviet
preparations, see a report of Mar. 18, 1946, noting, for example,
that hospitals
in Bucharest were being prepared to receive Soviet casualties. FRUS,
1946, vol.
7, pp. 818-19.
15 FRUS, 1945: The Conference of Berlin, vol. 2, pp. 303, 365.
16 FRUS, 1945, vol. 8, p. 1235. On the 1921 treaty, see Kuniholm,
Origins, p.
277n.
17 Wilson to Byrnes, Feb. 13, 1946, FRUS, 1946, vol. 7, pp. 815-16.
18 Leffler introduces this section by talking about how U.S.
officials were
considering how to deal with a Communist "seizure of power, or, more
likely (and
more worrisomely), a Communist electoral victory in Italy." And two
paragraphs
later he reaches his conclusion: Top U.S. officials ultimately
agreed that "if
necessary, military power should be used to prevent Italy from
falling under
Soviet domination."
19 "The Position of the United States with Respect to Italy" (NSC
1/2), Feb. 10,
1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 3, pp. 767-69; "Position of the United States
with
Respect to Italy in the Light of the Possibility of Communist
Participation in
the Government by Legal Means" (NSC 1/3), Mar. 8, 1948, ibid., pp.
775-79.
20 For Kennan's views, see especially, Policy Planning Staff,
"Review of Current
Trends," Feb. 24, 1948, FRUS, 1948, vol. 1, p. 519.
21 Kenneth W. Condit, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy,
vol. 2
(1947-1949) (Wilmington, Del.: Glazier, 1979), pp. 65-73. Note also
that the
minutes of the three NSC meetings Leffler cites at this point (n.
56) deal with
Greece, not Italy.
22 William Stueck, The Road to Confrontation: American Policy toward
China and
Korea, 1947-1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1981), pp.
75, 86-88, 111. With regard to the Sept. 1947 meeting, the reference
to how
America could not "scuttle and run" was the only part of the record
of that
meeting that Leffler chose to quote. See Leffler, Preponderance, p.
252.
23 Stueck, The Road to Confrontation, pp. 95, 153, 161; Leffler,
Preponderance,
p. 367. On North Korea and the "perimeter" speech, see the report of
an
interview with a retired North Korean general cited in Kathryn
Weathersby,
"Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, 1945-1950:
New Evidence
from Russian Archives," Cold War International History Project
Working Paper No.
8 (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, 1993), p.
26.
24 See also, Leffler, Preponderance, pp. 81, 121.
25 Ibid., pp. 99, 136, 442.
26 As Kuniholm pointed out in his exchange with Leffler in The
American
Historical Review, Stalin's successors certainly understood what
Soviet policy
had been, and admired that the policy of pressure had been
counterproductive.
Khrushchev in particular criticized Stalin for "frightening the
Turks right into
the open arms of the Americans." Kuniholm, "Comment," p. 387.
27 Leffler, "Reply," pp. 394-95.
28 On Stalin's calculation that the United States would not
intervene, see
Stueck, Road to Confrontation, p. 161; and, Weathersby, "Soviet Aims
in Korea,"
especially pp. 24-28.
29 Truman's unsent letter to Byrnes, Jan. 5, 1946, in Truman, Year
of Decisions,
p. 551.
30 Leffler, "Strategy, Diplomacy, and the Cold War," p. 813; and,
Fred Lawson,
"The Iranian Crisis of 1945-1946 and the Spiral Model of
International
Conflict," International Journal of Middle East Studies, Aug. 1989,
p. 320.
31 See, e.g., Leffler, Preponderance, p. 51.
32 John R. Oneal, Foreign Policy Making in Times of Crisis
(Columbus: Ohio State
University Press, 1982), p. 88. See also, Leffler, Preponderance,
pp. 79-80.
33 Compare, for example, his comment in the conclusion that "there
is little
reason even to think that Soviet risk-taking has been primarily
inspired by
their growing atomic or nuclear capabilities" with his comment in
the
introduction that "once the Soviets acquired their own atomic
capabilities" they
"showed a greater willingness to take risks." Leffler,
Preponderance, pp. 510,
14.
34 Marc Trachtenberg, "A 'Wasting Asset': American Strategy and the
Shifting
Nuclear Balance, 1949-1954," in History and Strategy, ed. Marc
Trachtenberg
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991), especially pp.
119-31.
35 See also, Leffler, Preponderance, p. 441.
36 CIA Intelligence Memorandum 323-SRC, "Soviet Preparations for
Major
Hostilities in 1950," Aug. 25, 1950. Leffler gives the archival
reference, but
the document is also available on microfiche: Declassified Documents
Reference
Service, 1987/3151.
37 NIE-3, "Soviet Capabilities and Intentions," Nov. 15, 1950.
Again, Leffler
gives the archival reference, but major excerpts from the document
were recently
published. See Scott Koch, ed., Selected Estimates on the Soviet
Union,
1950-1959 (Washington, D.C.: CIA Center for the Study of
Intelligence, 1993),
pp. 165-78.
38 See Trachtenberg, "A 'Wasting Asset,'" pp. 112-15, especially p.
114 (n. 46).
39 See Leffler, Preponderance, pp. 355-57, 491.
40 Ibid., pp. 55, 277, 281, 284, 439, 446.
41 For the evidence, see Trachtenberg, "A 'Wasting Asset,'"
especially pp.
107-15.
42 Leffler, Preponderance, pp. 283-84, 505-6.
Marc Trachtenberg is a professor of history at the University of
Pennsylvania.
He is currently writing a book on international politics during the
cold war
period.