Origins of the National Security State and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman The Truman Legacy Series, Volume 11

Based on the Eleventh Truman Legacy Symposium National Security May 2013 Key West, Florida

Edited by Mary Ann Heiss and Michael J. Hogan Edited by Mary Ann Heiss and Michael J. Hogan

Volume 11 Truman State University Press Kirksville, Missouri Copyright © 2015 Truman State University Press, Kirksville, Missouri, 63501 All rights reserved tsup.truman.edu

Cover photo: “Portrait of President Harry S. Truman,” December 14, 1952, courtesy of Harry S. Truman Library & Museum (2004-300).

Cover design: Katie Best

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

Origins of the national security state and the legacy of Harry S. Truman / edited by Mary Ann Heiss, Michael J. Hogan. pages cm. — (The Truman legacy series ; volume 11) Based on the Eleventh Truman Legacy Symposium, Truman and Foreign Aid, May 2013, Key West, Florida. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61248-124-1 (alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-1-61248-125-8 (e-book) 1. United States—Politics and government—1945–1953—Congresses. 2. Truman, Harry S., 1884–1972—Political and social views—Congresses. 3. Truman, Harry S., 1884–1972—Influence—Congresses. 4. National security—United States—History—20th century—Congresses. 5. United States—Foreign relations—1945–1953—Congresses. 6. Economic assistance, American—History—20th century—Congresses. 7. Military assistance, American—History—20th century—Congresses. 8. United States—Military policy—Congresses. 9. Cold War—Congresses. 10. Political culture—United States—History—20th century—Congresses. I. Heiss, Mary Ann., 1961- II. Hogan, Michael J., 1943– III. Truman Legacy Symposium (11th : 2013 : Key West, Fla.) E813.O75 2015 973.918092—dc23 2014024830

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any format by any means with- out written permission from the publisher.

The paper in this publication meets or exceeds the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–­1992. To our students: past, present, and to come. Contents

Illustrations & Table...... ix Foreword...... xi Preface...... xiii Introduction The National Security Discourse of the Early Cold War and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman...... 1 Michael J. Hogan

The Institutions of the National Security State Preparing for the Next Pearl Harbor Harry S. Truman’s Role in the Creation of the U.S. National Security Establishment...... 17 Douglas Stuart Setting the Stage Harry S. Truman and the American Military...... 39 Dale R. Herspring The Legacy of Military Spending during the Truman Administration...... 68 Benjamin O. Fordham The CIA Its Origin, Transformation, and Crisis of Identity from Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama...... 94 Richard H. Immerman and Timothy Andrews Sayle

Harry Truman and the National Security State A Graphic Essay ...... 119 Randy Sowell

The Implications of the National Security State The Military-­Academic-­Industrial Complex and the Path Not Taken...... 143 Audra J. Wolfe viii Contents

The Politics, and Political Legacy, of Harry S. Truman’s National Security Policies ...... 165 David C. Unger An Accidental Empire? President Harry S. Truman and the Origins of America’s Global Military Presence ...... 189 Aaron B. O’Connell The National Security State and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman Enduring Themes...... 212 Mark R. Jacobson Contributors...... 225 Index...... 229 Illustrations & Table

The Legacy of Military Spending during the Truman Administration (Fordham) Figure 1. Real Military Spending, 1929–2012...... 69 Figure 2. Military Spending as a Share of the Economy and Overall Government Spending ...... 71 Table 1. Ford and Carter Administrations’ Defense Budgets . . . . .76

Graphic Essay (Sowell) Admiral Chester Nimitz signing the Japanese surrender documents aboard the Missouri (TL 98–­2436)...... 121 Memorandum from President Harry S. Truman to the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, April 20, 1946, 2 pages (Subject File Agencies, President’s Secretary’s Files, Truman Papers, Truman Library)...... 122 Secretary James Forrestal and Secretary Robert Patterson to President Harry S. Truman, May 31, 1946, 2 pages (Official File 335-­A, Truman Papers, Truman Library)...... 123 White House Press Release, January 16, 1947, 2 pages (Official File 335-­A, Truman Papers, Truman Library)...... 125 Letter from President Harry S. Truman to Senator Arthur Vandenberg, February 26, 1947 (Official File 335-­A, Truman Papers, Truman Library)...... 127 Memorandum from Clark Clifford to President Harry S. Truman, July 22, 1947, 2 pages (Subject File, Clifford Papers, Truman Library) ...... 128 Memorandum by Clark Clifford, July 24, 1947, 2 pages (Subject File, Clifford Papers, Truman Library) ...... 130

ix x Illustrations & Table

President Harry S. Truman (diary entry for July 26–27, 1947). . . .131 Letter from Clark Clifford to James Forrestal, July 28, 1947 (Subject File, Clifford Papers, Truman Library)...... 132 W. Stuart Symington taking the oath of office as secretary of the Air Force (TL 97-­1900)...... 133 Rear Admiral Sidney Souers (TL 96-­986)...... 134 President Harry S. Truman with members of his National Security Council (TL 73–­2703)...... 135 Memorandum from Clark Clifford to President Harry S. Truman, January 24, 1949, 2 pages (Subject File, Clifford Papers, Truman Library)...... 136 James Forrestal watching Louis Johnson take the oath of office as Secretary of Defense (TL 58–­361)...... 138 President Harry S. Truman signing the National Security Act Amendments of 1949 (TL 73–­3202)...... 139 Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (TL 97–­1883)...... 140 Foreword

The eleventh annual Legacy Symposium focused on the fundamental and lasting changes in direction to the nation’s national security establishment made during the administration of Harry S. Truman. As with the previous symposia sponsored in cooperation with the Truman Little White House in Key West, Forida, the event held on May 17 and 18, 2013, brought together scholars and government officials to explore the most significant research produced on the topic in the past decade, and the papers presented at Key West comprise the core of this volume. Presenters and commenta- tors sought to explain the policies and actions of the Truman adminis- tration in the context of post–­World War II domestic and international concerns. In addition, participants reviewed the profound and lasting impact of the Truman administration’s creation of what came to be known as the National Security State and the Military-­Industrial Complex. Our keynote speaker, the former chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, Representative Ike Skelton [D-­MO], was unable to attend the symposium due to health issues. Representative Skelton knew President Truman, who encouraged young Ike to pursue a career in politics. In 1976, Bess Truman assisted Ike’s first election to the U.S. House from a district that included the Truman home in Independence. In a congressional career spanning thirty-­four years, Representative Skelton was recognized as an expert on defense issues. Perhaps no one in government knew the legacy of Truman’s national secu- rity actions better than Ike Skelton, and his contributions to the sympo- sium and this volume would have been of great significance. The nation lost a valued leader when the Honorable Isaac Newton “Ike” Shelton died on October 28, 2013. The hosts, sponsors, and funders of the eleventh Truman Legacy Symposium are especially grateful to Dr. Michael Hogan, former presi- dent of the University of Illinois, and Dr. Mary Ann Heiss of Kent State University for their excellent work in organizing the program and editing this volume. As general editor of this series, I am always appreciative of the efforts of Dr. Raymond Geselbracht, special assistant to the director of the

xi xii Foreword

Truman Library (recently retired), attending to the organizational details and providing editorial assistance. And, once again, the symposium and the resulting publication would not have been possible without the support and cooperation of Bob Wolz, director of the Truman Little White House in Key West, Florida, Historic Tours of America, and the Truman Little White House Foundation. CSPAN once again taped the proceedings in Key West for broadcast and placement in their extraordinarily valuable archive. Michael J. Devine General Editor Independence, Missouri Preface

Earlier versions of all but one of the essays that follow were originally delivered at the eleventh annual Truman Legacy Symposium, which we co-­organized on behalf of the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. The focus of that symposium was on the origins and legacy of the national security state that emerged during the early years of the Cold War. We were fortunate to recruit a very able group of scholars (Benjamin O. Fordham, Dale R. Herspring, Mark R. Jacobson, Aaron B. O’Connell, Douglas Stuart, David C. Unger, and Audra J. Wolfe) who collectively explored various aspects of the national security state when we met in Key West, Florida, in May 2013. And when hindsight revealed a not insignificant gap in coverage, Richard H. Immerman and Timothy Andrews Sayle ably filled it. As is always the case with projects like this, several people provided invaluable assistance along the way. We are indebted to Michael J. Devine, director of the Truman Library and Museum, and Raymond H. Geselbracht, special assistant to the director of the Library, for sage guidance as we planned the conference and especially for the assistance they rendered with local arrangements. We are particularly grateful to Ray, whose support and helpfulness never wavered, even when a sequestration of funds by the federal government prevented him from attending the conference himself. Thanks go as well to Robert J. Wolz, director of the Truman Little White House in Key West, and his superb staff, who gave us and the other conference participants the warmest of welcomes. Barbara Smith-­Mandell of Truman State University Press was unceasingly helpful, and we are grateful for her patience and good humor in shepherding this volume through to publication. Our biggest debt, however, is to the scholars who have allowed us to include their work, which represents some of the best scholarship on the origins and legacy of the national secu- rity state, in this volume. The national security state wrought wholesale changes to American society. New institutions were created. Old institutions were reconfigured. And time-­honored assumptions about the very nature of the nation itself were challenged. The essays in this volume assess the national security state created during the Truman administration and its legacy from two

xiii xiv Preface

broad perspectives: the institutions that comprised it and its broad societal implications. Regardless of their focus, all make clear the difficult terrain Truman faced when it came to national security issues, where he had to deal simultaneously with unprecedented international dangers and a vari- ety of domestic challenges. In the end, the decisions he made were not always easy or popular, but they were of great import at the time and their consequences continue to reverberate today. The introduction to this vol- ume provides a general overview of the ideological and political environ- ment in which Truman and his advisers operated when it came to national security and briefly summarizes the individual essays. Although each essay considers a discrete element or implication of the national security state and presents a unique interpretation of Truman’s role in creating it as well as his legacy, collectively they suggest several common themes that are worth briefly noting here. One theme that runs throughout the volume is the militarization of U.S. national security policy and the military dominance of much of the national security state itself. Specialists in the history of U.S. foreign rela- tions have long noted the tendency of American policy makers to seek military solutions to political problems in the course of the Cold War. But as the essays in this volume make clear, the same sort of militari- zation was evident in U.S. national security policy, as the United States constructed military bases around the world, emphasized military assis- tance over economic and development aid, and launched a host of mili- tary operations short of actual war. All of these initiatives reveal what is arguably an overreliance on military tools and weapons, with results that have often not been constructive. Something similar can be said for the Central Intelligence Agency’s gravitation toward covert operations, the way that military and defense concerns have come to dominate science and scientific research, and the Pentagon’s gradual predominance over the State Department when it comes to foreign affairs. The essays in this vol- ume address these issues, and others besides. Collectively they demonstrate the long reach that military considerations and methods have cast over the postwar national security establishment, as well as the deleterious conse- quences of such an approach. At the same time, by revealing the compromises that Truman was often forced to make when it came to national security issues, the essays confirm Otto von Bismarck’s claim that “politics is the art of the possible.” Some authors find fault with Truman’s leadership, lamenting his failure to push harder for desegregation of the military, for example, or to resist more forcefully the routinization of covert operations. Others see him in a more positive light, recognizing that he was a product of his time, could Preface xv only do so much, and was, after all, beset by a host of domestic roadblocks and barriers to action. The unevenness of Truman’s record is undeniable, as he certainly achieved greater success in some areas than in others. But rather than attributing his failures or shortcomings to lack of will or even baser motives, it is probably more appropriate to see them as reflecting the difficulty of policy making, particularly given the highly charged political landscape he had to navigate, and the president’s recognition that priori- tizing the elements of his political agenda would net him at least some of what he desired. In other words, rather than adopting an all-­or-­nothing approach, he took what he could get. A third common thread that ties the essays together is the broad ques- tion of intentionality, which gets at the heart of Truman’s legacy. There is no question that the national security state created on the thirty-­third pres- ident’s watch has had profound effects for the United States and the world at large. At home, the nation has wrestled with mounting military budgets, a militarized scientific community, and a host of other security-­related trappings. Abroad, the United States has used its considerable economic and especially military power to impose its will on others. Less certain is whether or to what degree Truman could have foreseen such develop- ments. Was the Truman Doctrine, for example, an inadvertent step down the path to a global campaign against communism? Or did Truman know- ingly lay the groundwork for what amounted to a U.S. imperial presence around the world? Would Truman have supported high military budgets absent the Cold War threat? And did his efforts to protect national security lead the United States to forsake its national interests? In considering these and other questions, the essays in this volume remind us of the impor- tance of viewing Truman within the lens of his own time rather than one enlarged and expanded with the benefit of hindsight. Not surprisingly, the essays reach different conclusions about Truman’s national security legacy. Some are positive, some not. But regardless of their ultimate judgment or assessment, the authors all agree that Truman played a major role in creating and shaping the national security state, and that the decisions he made at the dawn of the post–­World War II era still echo today. In that way, his legacy continues even now to cast its shadow over his successors. Mary Ann Heiss Michael J. Hogan February 2014 Introduction The National Security Discourse of the Early Cold War and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman

Michael J. Hogan

As the first president of the post–­World War II era, Harry S. Truman played a key role in some of the most momentous domestic and foreign policy developments in American history. Many of those developments are covered in other volumes of the Truman Legacy Series, which address such domestic issues as the environment, immigration, and civil rights, and such international issues as the creation of Israel, policy toward Northeast Asia, of which the Korean War was a part, and the broad subject of national security.1 This volume addresses a topic that bridges domestic and foreign policy—­the national security establishment, which the Truman adminis- tration created in the early years of the Cold War and which remains very much alive more than two decades after the Cold War ended. The unprecedented nature of the Cold War led to a host of new policy initiatives by the Truman administration, including the Greco-­ Turkish aid program under the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but also to new fears that these and similar initiatives marked a potentially dangerous departure from American history and tradition. The turn in one direction was away from the old tradition of isolationism and unilateralism, toward a new emphasis on internationalism and collective security. But just as important, according to critics like Senator Robert A. Taft [R-­OH], were the potentially deleterious consequences such a course could have for American institutions at home. Hanson Baldwin, the military affairs writer for the New York Times, framed the issue this way: “How can we prepare for total war,” he asked in 1947, “without becoming a ‘garrison

1 2 Michael J. Hogan

state’ and destroying the very qualities and virtues and principles we originally set out to save?”2 The profound transformation of American society wrought by the early Cold War included efforts to unify the armed forces, organize the Defense Department, harness science to military purposes, mobilize mil- itary manpower, and distribute the cost of defense across the economy. The intense internal debates over these issues, as well as the scope of the country’s commitments around the world, brought into sharp focus the dramatic postwar transformation of the American state—­in effect, the creation of a national security state where none had existed before. That state included not only the Defense Department but also the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, and other institutions. This transformation did not go uncontested. On the contrary, state making took place in a highly charged political environment that pit- ted civilian against military authorities, Congress against the executive branch, Republicans against Democrats. At issue were basic questions about the nation’s postwar purpose and political identity. On one side of the national security discourse stood the critics of American policy, mostly conservatives in the Republican Party and their allies in the press. Their thinking drew on an American cultural narrative with a discursive tradi- tion that stretched from the republican ideology of the Founding Fathers through the antiwar and antigovernment campaigns of the recent period. As conservatives saw it, the warfare state that was taking shape in the post- war period imperiled the values and traditions that had contributed to this narrative of national greatness, including a strong antipathy toward entangling alliances, a large peacetime military establishment, and the centralization of authority in the national government. These were seen as European rather than American practices and would undermine the very institutions that had made America great, including the Constitution itself, which seemed to be endangered by the creation of a powerful mili- tary establishment, by the new role that military leaders played in the civil- ian side of government, and by the centralization of government authority at the expense of a balanced system of representation in which authority was more widely dispersed and decentralized.3 Nor were these idle con- cerns in a period marked by dramatic challenges to constitutional author- ity, as in the admirals’ revolt of 1949, Truman’s decision to wage war in Korea and send troops to Europe in 1950, and Douglas MacArthur’s bold defiance of presidential leadership in 1951. Conservatives saw similar dangers in the growing defense budget. By increasing the size of the federal establishment and by concentrating more The National Security Discourse of the Early Cold War 3 power in the executive branch, particularly in its military arm, defense spending aroused in conservative critics a traditional distrust of big gov- ernment, centralized authority, and military rule. It also prompted a vig- orous defense of what they viewed as the country’s historic commitment to fiscal responsibility and a balanced budget. To the conservative mind, budget deficits would encourage inflation, corrupt the currency, or lead to higher taxes and economic controls that expanded the public sphere at the expense of the private, denied citizens the fruits of their labor, and eroded their capacity for hard work and self-­help. In this sense, budget deficits, high taxes, and government controls would not only militarize the economy, they would also undermine the independence of the virtuous citizen, celebrated in the republican ideology of the Founders, and destroy the habits of perseverance, self-­discipline, and initiative on which both economic and political freedom depended.4 On the other side of the national security discourse stood the Truman administration and its supporters in Congress and the press. This group, too, borrowed from a cultural narrative that celebrated American excep- tionalism and American destiny, and from a discursive tradition that dated to the era of manifest destiny in the early decades of the nineteenth cen- tury. At the same time, however, Truman and his allies were more likely than the conservatives to balance a defense of tradition against appeals to a new ideology of national security that took shape in the period between the start of World War II and the end of the Korean War. This ideology supposedly accommodated the stern realities of international politics and, thus, made room for the important postwar responsibilities that fell to the United States. Its central components can be summarized as follows. To begin with, this group was convinced that a new era of total war had dawned on the United States. In total war, the battle was not confined to the front lines but extended to the home front as well, as did the awesome destruction that modern weapons could inflict not only on military combat- ants but also on industry, urban centers, and civilian populations. Modern war was total war in this sense and in the sense that modern armies depended on the output of citizen soldiers in farms and factories behind the battle line. In total war, all of the nation’s resources and all of its energy and talent had to be mobilized on behalf of the war effort. When American leaders talked about total war they did so in these terms but also in terms that recognized that modern weapons could bring massive destruction from great distances with barely a moment’s notice and little or no time to prepare a defense. In short, the new age of total war seemed to require a degree of continuous military preparedness that was out of step with traditional convictions and old habits, such as the traditional fear of a large standing army that had Preparing for the Next Pearl Harbor Harry S. Truman’s Role in the Creation of the U.S. National Security Establishment

Douglas Stuart

Security is a value, then, of which a nation can have more or less. . . . Every increment of security must be paid for by additional sacrifices of other values. . . . At a certain point, by something like the economic law of diminishing returns, the gain in security no longer compensates for the added cost of attaining it. —­Arnold Wolfers, “‘National Security’ as an Ambiguous Symbol”1

By the time that Arnold Wolfers published his essay in December 1952, Harry S. Truman was preparing to turn over the White House to Dwight D. Eisenhower, along with a new network of institutions designed to serve a conception of national security that had completely replaced the tradi- tional concept of national interest as the guide to American foreign policy. This essay will discuss the national security institutions created during the Truman era and also comment on how and why certain national security institutions were not created during this period. This discussion will be followed by a brief survey of the evolution of the national security estab- lishment during the Cold War. The essay will conclude with an assessment of the current situation and the problems that have been created by a fear-­ based approach to foreign affairs. The Pearl Harbor System John Lewis Gaddis has observed that “surprise attacks tend to sweep away old conceptions of national security.”2 More than any other event in U.S. history, the Pearl Harbor attack had this transformative effect on the

17 18 Douglas Stuart

American people. Overnight, the powerful isolationist movement disap- peared and preparedness was established as the new standard against which all future U.S. foreign and defense policies would be judged. America had let down its guard in December 1941, and Washington could not be per- mitted to make this mistake again. It is worth emphasizing that the new priority accorded to preparedness preceded the postwar debate over anti-­ Soviet containment. If the U.S.-­Soviet alliance had persisted after the war, Americans would still have demanded a new approach to foreign policy that viewed international events through the lens of national security. During the Second World War, President Franklin D. Roosevelt experimented with new institutions to enhance preparedness. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) was created to facilitate interservice cooperation. A new Office of Strategic Services was established “to collect and analyze strategic information and operate special services.”3 In the latter stages of the war, a State-­War-­Navy Coordinating Committee was formed to make it easier for the State Department to work with the armed services on big postwar challenges like the occupations of Germany and Japan. It was left to Roosevelt’s successor, however, to build upon these wartime experiments in order to construct a new network of institutions that would deliver on the promise of “no more Pearl Harbors.” Harry Truman had strong opinions about what was needed to insure American preparedness. “The end, of course, must be the integration of every element of America’s defense in one department under one authorita- tive, responsible head. . . . Under such a set-­up another Pearl Harbor will not have to be feared.”4 Truman was encouraged in his support for armed forces unification by the fact that the entire Army leadership agreed with him. Most of these Army leaders supported unification as a substantive improvement in efficiency. But they were also aware that with the end of the war the armed services would be facing demands for significant budget cuts. And as General George C. Marshall noted, in times of eco- nomic stringency, land forces always have special problems competing for funding with more “photogenic” airmen and sailors. The Army leadership recognized that their service would be in a better position to manage the demands for cutbacks if it were as one part of an integrated national mili- tary establishment.5 Truman began to press for unification even before the war ended, and at first he was optimistic about his prospects. After James V. Forrestal became secretary of the Navy in May 1944, however, the Navy leadership and their friends in Congress began to close ranks in opposition to unifica- tion. The two sides settled into a form of political trench warfare that lasted for the next three years. At first the momentum favored Truman’s plan, Preparing for the Next Pearl Harbor 19 but the situation began to change after Forrestal commissioned a report authored by his friend Ferdinand A. Eberstadt. The report was designed to shift the focus of the debate away from the issue of armed forces unifica- tion per se, and to make the case that national security required an entirely different approach to policy making. While the report admitted that the merger of the Army and Navy “looks good on paper,” the Eberstadt Report argued that the merger would place unification “at too low a level.”6 Preparedness could only be assured if Washington developed the capacity to integrate all of the instruments of power—­military, diplomatic, and economic in particular—­at the highest level of government. With 20/20 hindsight, it is difficult to understand why the president did not fire Forrestal when the Navy secretary began to publicly challenge one of his top priorities. In any case, by 1947 the Navy and its defenders in Congress had put up such a strong counteroffensive that the president rec- ognized that his goal of armed forces unification was unattainable. Under these circumstances, Truman the politician pressed for a quick ending to the political struggle, in a form that he could claim as a victory. What he, and we, ended up with was the 1947 National Security Act, which established a network of new national security institutions, including the following: • A National Military Establishment composed of three armed services that were to be very loosely administered by a weak secretary of defense. This arrangement was so fundamentally flawed that it began to be revised very soon after its creation. In 1949 the institution was renamed the Department of Defense (DOD) and the authority of the secretary was enhanced. Suc- cessive reforms in 1953, 1958, and 1986 further enhanced the power of the secretary. • A National Security Council (NSC) that was described in the Eberstadt Report as the “keystone” of the new network of in- stitutions. Envisioned by Eberstadt and Forrestal as a forum for productive national security deliberations between civilian and military representatives, it was strongly opposed by Secretary of State George Marshall on the grounds that it would pose a threat to the authority of the president. He encouraged the president’s suspicion that the NSC might become a “second cabinet” that would seek to influence, rather than advise, the president. Marshall also warned that there would be so many military representatives in the NSC that the secretary of state would be relegated to the status of an “automaton.” Truman was attentive to Marshall’s concerns, but he was not prepared to hold up passage of the legislation. It was left to Truman’s Setting the Stage Harry S. Truman and the American Military

Dale R. Herspring

World War II was hardly over when battles between the military services and their commander in chief, President Harry S. Truman, began. From this point on, the executive would never again be able to deal with the military without taking into consideration the position of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) vis-­à-­vis Congress or their ability to make use of leaks to the media. An indecisive or weak president like Truman would find it dif- ficult to force the military to do what he wanted, unless he was assured of congressional support. In the end, Truman would win most of his battles with the Chiefs, but not without considerable hesitation and effort. The Chiefs’ attitude toward Truman on questions such as unification of the armed services, service roles and missions, and racial integration depended on the service. As we will see, the U.S. Navy fought unification to the end, while the Army would be the major obstacle to integrating blacks into the armed forces. Truman would try persuasion in these and other cases, but it was not enough. In both of the preceding instances, he was forced to order the military to take the steps he advocated. What is more, when it came to the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur, the third case examined in this essay, Truman was again the one who hesitated, not the Chiefs, who were more aggressive and ready to act much earlier. Not only do these three cases illustrate Truman’s leadership style and effectiveness, they also say something about the legacy he bestowed upon his successors. Presidential Leadership Style Alexander L. George and Eric Stern have said that Truman’s leadership style followed what they called the “formalistic” model.1 This model argues that the president deals with problems by playing the chairman of the board. He listens to what the heads of the various departments have to

39 40 Dale R. Herspring

say, synthesizes their opinions, makes a decision, and then leaves it to the department head (the secretary of defense or the JCS, for example) to implement it. In other words, he functions within bureaucratic channels. Two other presidential scholars have labeled Truman “a systematic admin- istrator.”2 The idea of calling up a subordinate without informing his supe- rior beforehand was unthinkable to Truman. Indeed, he recognized the importance of bureaucratic structure as exemplified by his support for the creation of the National Security Council (NSC) as a vehicle “to coordi- nate foreign policy advice to the president and assist him in arriving at coherent and cohesive foreign policy judgments.”3 This approach is fine as far as it goes. But in the cases studied in this essay, Truman’s reluctance to move beyond formal administrative structures in favor of bold or decisive action only prolonged problems, strengthened military authority, and led to substantial problems that still affect us today. Truman Becomes President No one was more surprised when he became president than Harry S. Truman. In the summer of 1944 he found himself on the presidential ticket with Franklin D. Roosevelt as the latter won his fourth term. Then, on April 12, 1945, Roosevelt died and Truman was suddenly commander in chief. He was soon off to Europe to meet with British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin at Potsdam and, like his predecessor, he relied heavily on senior military officers at the conference—­most notably his Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, and Truman’s own chief of staff, Admiral William D. Leahy. The latter in particular would play a major role at Potsdam, just as he had at Teheran and Yalta.4 Shortly after becoming president, Truman also learned for the first time about the development of the atomic bomb. The question was, what to do with it? Should it be used against the Japanese? Dependent as he was on military advice, Truman commented, “I went into immediate con- sultation with [James F.] Byrnes, [Secretary of War Henry L.] Stimson, Admiral Leahy, General Marshall, General [Henry H.] Arnold, General [Dwight D.] Eisenhower, and Admiral [Ernest J.] King. I asked for their opinions on whether the bomb should be used.”5 One key question was who should make the final decision on its usage: the president or the rel- evant military commander. The point is that when Truman had to make major strategic decisions, he often relied primarily on the opinions of his military advisers, one of whom, in this case, was General Eisenhower, who argued against using the bomb against Japan. It is also worth noting that after the war Truman made extensive use of senior military officers in what Setting the Stage 41 would normally be considered civilian positions, thereby starting a trend that continues to this day. In a number of cases, however, Truman was not afraid to assert his presidential authority.

The Fight over Unification Because of Franklin Roosevelt’s particular leadership style, the military services—­and indeed the whole defense effort—­had been held together during the war by personalities and by arrangements that one writer has called “haphazard and jerry-­rigged,” including a host of more or less infor- mally organized JCS committees dealing with intelligence, civil affairs, industrial production, postwar policy, and other issues.6 These arrange- ments worked so long as the war lasted and Roosevelt lived, but they could not substitute for a structured, institutionalized arrangement under a new president. On the contrary, they were bound to break down as soon as the war ended and “normalcy” returned to Washington. A greater form of “jointness” seemed to be the best approach, but how to achieve it? Efforts in this direction had begun during the war. For example, in the aftermath of the bureaucratic beating the Joint Chiefs of Staff took at Casablanca from the much better organized British, General Marshall had ordered a “comprehensive reappraisal and reorganization of the support structure of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”7 This reappraisal led to more joint committees, but not to anything like effective unification of the services, which met steady resistance from the U.S. Navy. In November 1943, for example, when Marshall, with support from General Arnold, proposed that the JCS unify the War and Navy departments into a sin- gle Department of War, Admirals King and Leahy adamantly refused to agree, “even in principle.”8 Instead, the proposal was sent to a study group, which was Washington’s way to kill it, or at least delay its serious consider- ation for the indefinite future. There was a growing sentiment, especially on Truman’s part, that uni- fication of the services would go a long way toward strengthening their combat readiness and conserving resources. Eisenhower agreed, arguing that unification would “promote efficiency” and “avoid unconscionable duplication.”9 In fact, General Eisenhower, the Army’s chief of staff, went so far as to propose that the services adopt a single uniform and that cadets from West Point spend their third year at the naval academy at Annapolis while midshipmen from Annapolis complete their third year at West Point. His goal, as one of his biographers has argued, was “to break the power of the West Point and Annapolis cliques, [and] to make the armed services more democratic.”10 The Legacy of Military Spending during the Truman Administration

Benjamin O. Fordham

The Harry S. Truman administration transformed the role of the United States in the world. To be sure, this transformation began with American participation in World War II, but there was no guarantee that the country would adopt a similarly expansive role in the postwar world order. After all, the United States had not done so after World War I, in spite of Woodrow Wilson’s ambitious plans. One important aspect of this change was a large and sustained increase in the scope of American military power. After a brief period of demobilization at the end of World War II, the Truman administration embarked on a vast program of increased military spend- ing. Although this policy was closely associated with the Korean War, it was not primarily a response to the demands of that conflict. The policy makers who designed and implemented the buildup intended it to be sus- tained indefinitely, and so it has been, even though many of the consid- erations that prompted them to launch it have long since ceased to be relevant. In assessing the legacy of military spending during the Truman administration, the outcomes that actually followed from it should be considered alongside contemporary worries about its possible effects. The United States had no prior tradition of maintaining a large military force in peacetime. Fears persisted throughout the Cold War that doing so would damage the economy and militarize society. Worry about the prospect of a “garrison state” was most pronounced on the ideological fringes of American politics, first on the right during the 1940s and 1950s, then on the left in the wake of the war in Vietnam.1 Even senior officials,

68 The Legacy of Military Spending during Truman’s Administration 69 however, sometimes shared this concern. In his January 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned that “we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-­industrial complex. The potential for the disas- trous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”2 The Truman administration’s military buildup had important and lasting effects. Some of these effects were the result of conscious design, but others were unintended and would have been very difficult to antici- pate. Similarly, not everything that contemporary observers worried about actually came to pass. This essay will consider the major legacies (and non-­legacies) of military spending during the Truman administration in three areas: (1) subsequent military budgets, other government spending, and the national economy; (2) the politics of military spending within the policy-­making elite; and (3) public opinion. Military spending is only one aspect of the administration’s foreign and defense policies, but it provides a useful window onto the administration’s broader policy decisions and their lasting effects. Military Spending and Mobilization

The Truman administration was neither the first nor the last to embark on a program of increased military spending. How does the military buildup launched in 1950 compare to other such efforts? Figure 1 shows U.S. mili- tary spending adjusted for inflation since 1929, the longest period for which there are readily comparable data.3 Two features of this figure are worth noting. First, the level of military spending the administration contemplated

Figure 1. Real Military Spending, 1929–2012 70 Benjamin O. Fordham

was quite high by historical standards. The extraordinary level of spending during World War II might obscure this point, but even after the Korean War ended, peacetime spending remained higher than it had been during the 1947–­1950 period, and much higher than it had been before World War II. It was also quite high in comparison to other major powers earlier in the twentieth century. In the three years prior to World War II, Germany, Japan, France, and Britain spent a combined annual average of $86 billion.4 Second, the Truman administration’s buildup established a durable pat- tern in the level of U.S. military spending. As figure 1 indicates, the level of spending varied over time, but has mainly stayed within the bounds estab- lished in the early 1950s. The peak level of spending during the Truman administration’s rearmament program was roughly comparable to that asso- ciated with other postwar peaks in military spending. Similarly, the low point the budget reached after the buildup is roughly the same as the low points reached after subsequent buildups. While the most recent peak in spending is noticeably higher than those reached during the Cold War, even this level of spending is only about 18 percent greater than the 1952 peak. The current size of the American military, like many other aspects of foreign and defense policy, still reflects decisions made during the Truman era to some extent. Force structure has changed since the Truman era, increasingly relying on technology and a relatively smaller number of military personnel. Yet, roughly the same budget constraints apply. The level of real spending suggests a broad continuity in the size of the American military since the Truman years. This level of spending is an important legacy, though its continuing effects would have been dif- ficult for anyone to foresee when the administration left office in 1953. The collapse of the Soviet Union left the United States with an unprecedented military edge over every other state in the international system, a fact that has prompted much discussion among international relations theorists about “unipolarity.” As figure 1 indicates, the spending cuts of the early 1990s did not take the United States below the levels prevailing during the Cold War. Truman administration policy makers intended for the buildup of the 1950–­1952 period to be sustained over time. One wonders if any of them would have expected it to continue at this level even after the Soviet Union had disappeared. If military spending has continued at roughly the levels established in the early 1950s, the level of mobilization required to field this force has declined steadily since the Truman years. Figure 2 shows military spend- ing as a share of the economy and of overall government spending.5 The growth of the U.S. economy and of government spending has steadily reduced the economic and fiscal burden of maintaining a similarly sized The CIA Its Origin, Transformation, and Crisis of Identity from Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama

Richard H. Immerman and Timothy Andrews Sayle

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is America’s most enigmatic insti- tution. Few who were present at its creation in 1947 could have imagined that an agency dedicated to stealth would nonetheless become one of the government’s most publicly known agencies and the world’s most recog- nizable acronym. “The Company,” as it is sometimes called, has been the subject of countless journalistic accounts and exposés, histories and novels, films and television shows. By the twenty-­first century, Hollywood stars had become recruiting symbols for covert operatives, and in 2011 the for- mer agent Valerie Plame Wilson, herself the subject of a blockbuster movie, signed a book deal to write a series of spy novels. Making no apologies to Jennifer Garner, Piper Perabo, Claire Danes, or any other actress, Plame Wilson explained that she hoped her characters would transform “how female C.I.A. officers are portrayed in popular culture.” The Agency itself is highly conscious of how it is portrayed in text and on celluloid and has responded to films with critical reviews of its own.1 It even has its own YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Twitter account.2 Because of these same histories, exposés, films, and novels, however, the CIA retains a remarkable aura of mystery and myth. This poses a chal- lenge to both citizens and scholars: How does one discriminate between legend and history? Journalists and academics have sought to separate fact from fiction by focusing on the CIA’s origins and by closely dissecting its evolution from the World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to the modern-day Agency. This chapter appreciates that strategy and ben- efits from that literature. Yet it also recognizes that the myths and legends

94 The CIA 95 about the CIA, indeed the distortions and embellishments that character- ize so much of its public portrayal, provide revealing clues as to what “The Company” is, or more accurately, what it has become. Focusing on the Agency’s difficult birth and then tracing its maturation in broad strokes, this essay argues that the CIA’s modern identity differs dramatically from the kind of institution originally envisioned by the Truman administra- tion and Congress in 1947. As a consequence, it has too often lost sight of, and thus ineffectively pursued, its original core mission. This legacy of distorted purpose continues to plague the CIA today. Although the CIA’s transformation between 1947 and 1952 was remarkably rapid and thorough, its establishment was decidedly unremark- able. To be sure, many Americans still shared a historic aversion to “reading each other’s mail,” as former secretary of state Henry L. Stimson famously described the spy business.3 Indeed, within months of the end of the war, President Harry S. Truman had abolished the OSS in large part because he feared its potential to evolve into an American “Gestapo,” especially if headed by its wartime leader, William “Wild Bill” Donovan.4 Conservative Republicans felt the same way. They worried lest a peacetime intelligence service become yet another bloated New Deal agency that threatened indi- vidual freedoms, undermined the U.S. Constitution, and unbalanced the budget.5 But while these concerns pushed in one direction, the shock of Pearl Harbor to America’s sense of invulnerability and the new complexity and accelerated speed of war, combined with the nation’s expanding global interests and the formidable challenges it faced abroad, offered compelling reasons for the creation—­or at least the consolidation—­of a national intel- ligence apparatus. The extant scholarship has left room for little debate about the why and the how of the CIA’s origins—­despite a complicated lineage that sandwiched a National Intelligence Authority and Central Intelligence Group in the two-­year interval between the OSS’s abolition and the CIA’s establishment.6 What remains a puzzle is the what. By what process, or for what reason, did America’s only national foreign intelli- gence agency comprised of civilians and independent of other government departments or agencies acquire, virtually overnight, an assignment far removed from its core mission of collecting and analyzing all-­source intel- ligence: the conduct of covert actions? Covert actions, or “covert ops,” encompass a broad set of “black” oper- ations, including clandestine radio broadcasts, the recruitment of “assets,” sabotage, assassination, regime change, and everything in between. It was the increasing centrality of these operations to the CIA’s portfolio of responsibilities that severely impaired its capacity for collection and analy- sis. And it was that impairment that, in turn, contributed to, if it did not 96 Richard H. Immerman and Timothy Andrews Sayle

produce, poorly designed and executed covert projects on the one hand and intelligence failures on the other. Whether geopolitics, global reputa- tion, or domestic support is the barometer, America’s national interests have suffered as a result. A careful reading of the historical record reveals that the contemporary CIA’s dual responsibilities—­for analysis and covert action—­evolved during the Cold War and contravened its designers’ intent. Accordingly, the structural flaws that have regularly undermined the CIA’s performance for most of its history are not impervious to reform. The story begins in the months leading up to Truman’s election in 1948, when a confluence of bureaucratic politics, individual initiatives, and strategic preferences radically redefined the CIA’s identity and mis- sion. The military perceived a covert capability as a vital supplement to its planning and operations, but a distraction from its focus on fighting a “real” war. Senior officials in the intelligence community categorized covert operations as aggressive instruments for stealing secrets. And strate- gists, politicians, and ideologues considered them effective and low-­risk methods to roll back the Communist tide. That these actions would in the years ahead generate so much blowback, in Iran, Guatemala, Syria, the Congo, Afghanistan, and numerous other places, was not considered because it was not imagined. Nor was it imagined that the attention and resources devoted to these operations would make the Agency’s Directorate of Intelligence the stepchild of the Directorate of Operations (currently the National Clandestine Service). The political scientist Amy Zegart correctly writes that the CIA’s architecture was flawed from its first day. But she mis- represents the end product when she claims that it was “flawed by design.”7 Intelligence analysis and covert operations inherently make for a rocky relationship, especially in the zero-­sum world of bureaucratic poli- tics. Great Britain, for example, entered the post–­World War II era with MI5, MI6, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), and other intelligence services based on divided roles and missions.8 In 1947 America, however, the national security state and the nation’s acceptance of its global power were in their infancy. That immaturity, juxtaposed with U.S. history and culture, made creating even one “peacetime” foreign intelligence agency enormously difficult. Further, other possible sites to situate covert opera- tions, above all the military, resisted accepting them. The result was the ballooning, and ultimately the distortion, of the CIA’s responsibilities. “Ballooning” and “distortion” are the appropriate words in this con- text. Documentation on the CIA’s origin reveals that the raison d’être for Congress’s establishing a civilian foreign intelligence service was to institu- tionalize and improve the capabilities of the Central Intelligence Group’s Office of Reports and Estimates. ORE’s mission was to coordinate, pro- Harry Truman and the National Security State A Graphic Essay

Randy Sowell Truman and the National Security State, Graphic Essay 121

Admiral Chester Nimitz signing the Japanese surrender documents aboard the Missouri (TL 98–­2436).

Admiral Chester Nimitz signed the Japanese surrender documents aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, in the presence of General Douglas MacArthur (left) and other officers of both the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy, on September 2, 1945. Notwithstanding the Allied victory in World War II, there was a widespread perception that the American military had been hampered during the conflict by rivalry between the Army and Navy, result- ing in inefficiency and duplication of effort. Some even attributed the fail- ure to predict the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to a lack of cooperation between the two armed services. There were also concerns about the future role of the Army Air Forces. The new president, Harry S. Truman, wasted no time addressing these issues. On December 19, 1945, less than four months after the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay, he sent a message to Congress calling for unification of the armed forces and a dramatic restruc- turing of the national security establishment. 122 Randy Sowell

Memorandum from President Harry S. Truman to the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, April 20, 1946, 2 pages (Subject File, Agencies, President’s Secretary’s Files, Truman Papers, Truman Library).

In this memorandum to a congressional committee that was examining the issue, President Truman stated his arguments for unification of the armed forces in straightforward fashion. Truman emphasized that he had no desire to make one branch of the armed services superior to another, and he spe- cifically denied that he had any intention of abolishing the Marine Corps Truman and the National Security State, Graphic Essay 123 or crippling Naval Aviation (both matters of concern to advocates of the Navy, in uniform and in Congress). The president believed that unifica- tion would greatly improve military efficiency and capability, allowing the United States to meet its responsibilities in an uncertain postwar world complicated by increasing U.S.-­Soviet tensions and Soviet expansionism. As he frequently did during his presidency, Truman identified American interests with the peacekeeping mission of the United Nations.

Secretary James Forrestal and Secretary Robert Patterson to President Harry S. Truman, May 31, 1946, 2 pages (Official File 335-­A, Truman Papers, Truman Library). (See also next page.)

As part of his program for the unification of the armed forces, President Truman ordered Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal and Secretary of War The Military-­Academic-­Industrial Complex and the Path Not Taken

Audra J. Wolfe

President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address famously warned of the creeping dangers of the “military-­industrial complex.”1 Eisenhower’s memorable phrase gave name to a phenomenon that had already attracted the attention of anxious scientists and cultural critics: the militarization of American scientific research. Indeed, by 1961, an observer of the American scientific research system might have been hard pressed to articulate the logic that housed basic science at Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) installations, the development of air defense systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and theoretical economics at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit think tank sponsored by the U.S. Air Force. It is difficult to overstate the presence of military funding in university and industrial labs in the late 1940s and 1950s: by some estimates, more than three-­quarters of all federal investment in scientific research came from a single military research agency, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), in the early postwar years.2 The increasingly blurred lines between academic, military, and indus- trial research are a distinguishing characteristic of the national security state in Cold War America. Though typically associated with the Eisenhower administration, this peculiar—­and historically unique—­partnership between academic and industrial researchers and military patrons grew directly from decisions made during the Harry S. Truman administration. Some of the very first choices Truman faced after the Japanese surrender in 1945 concerned funding for scientific research. A trio of decisions on security and secrecy, involving Nazi rocket scientists, loyalty oaths, and the hydrogen bomb, discouraged scientists who disagreed with national security policy from participating in advisory groups. And while Truman’s own Point

143 144 Audra J. Wolfe

Four plan suggested more optimistic uses for science and technology, this vision failed to displace the military establishment’s assumption that science should, first and foremost, be used for defense. It would take the cataclysm of the Vietnam War to disrupt the Cold War link between science and security that took root during the Truman’s first and second terms. The Political Economy of Postwar Science At the end of World War II many American leaders, civilian and military alike, credited the Allies’ victory to scientific and technical achievements. These accomplishments had relied upon an unprecedented military mobi- lization of individual scientists, university resources, and industrial labs. The transition to peace, uneasy as it might be, raised the question for both scientists and politicians of whether it was possible to sustain this level of cooperation between scientific and military authorities outside the context of a national emergency. By the fall of 1945, the U.S. Congress was considering two contrast- ing proposals for a federal scientific research organization. The first, intro- duced by Senator Warren Magnuson [D-­WA], advanced the agenda for autonomous science outlined by outgoing Office of Scientific Research and Development Director Vannevar Bush. As Bush put it in that summer’s Science: The Endless Frontier, “Without scientific progress no amount of national achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosper- ity, and security as a nation in the modern world.” Because Bush wanted to free scientists from what he perceived as the dangers of political inter- ference, he proposed an agency led by scientists and driven by scientific concerns. Magnuson’s proposal for a “National Research Foundation,” following Bush’s lead, excluded the social sciences from federal support, avoided discussions of intellectual property, and assumed that the new agency would simply fund the most promising research, regardless of its congressional district.3 A second bill, sponsored by Senator Harley M. Kilgore [D-­WV], envisioned a National Science Foundation that would coordinate federal research, sponsor educational fellowships, secure patents in the name of the government, and include a geographical formula to ensure the equi- table distribution of research funds. Intended to support research in a wide variety of fields that might conceivably advance the nation’s interests, Kilgore’s proposal included funding for both the natural and the social sciences. Kilgore’s version differed, too, in its approach to expertise. While the leaders of Bush’s foundation would be selected by a board of “quali- fied” (presumably scientific) experts, in Kilgore’s version, the director would be appointed by the president; its board would include not only sci- The Military-Ac­ ademic-­Industrial Complex & the Path Not Taken 145 entific authorities but also representatives from agriculture, industry, and labor. If Kilgore’s proposal extended the hallmarks of New Deal central- ized planning to postwar scientific research, Magnuson’s bill was intended to erect a wall between scientists and the political process. Truman preferred Kilgore’s version. In his legislative message to Congress in the fall of 1945, Truman echoed Bush’s claims that “progress in scientific research and development is an indispensable condition to the future welfare and security of the Nation.” But beyond that surface similar- ity, Truman called for support of the social sciences, for government owner- ship of “the fruits of research financed by federal funds,” and the creation of a centralized research agency to coordinate scientific and technical research across various civilian and military agencies. The resulting compromise bill got bogged down between the House and Senate, and no National Science Foundation bill emerged from the seventy-ninth Congress.4 In retrospect, the fall of 1945 was probably the best chance that Truman had to protect civilian oversight for the postwar scientific research enterprise. Faced with a hostile Congress after the elections of November 1946, Truman lost control of his legislative agenda. The president neverthe- less attempted to develop the concept that Kilgore had championed, com- missioning a five-­volume report on Science and Public Policy that called for increased spending on basic scientific and medical research and the estab- lishment of a politically accountable National Science Foundation. By the time the report was submitted in August 1947, however, Congress had already passed legislation that hewed closely to Bush’s version. Truman vetoed it.5 The National Science Foundation Act that was eventually passed and signed in 1950 combined aspects of both Kilgore’s and Magnuson’s bills from 1945. Both the NSF’s director and its board would serve at the plea- sure of the president, and the agency would be responsible for coordinating a national research plan. The agency would not fund research in the social sciences, nor would it fund military projects. As signed into law, the NSF would focus on so-­called pure or fundamental research projects, selected solely on the basis of intellectual merit without regard to geographical distribution. The NSF would eventually become a powerhouse of scientific research funding. At the moment of its creation, however, it was a bit player. The original plans for the NSF included annual research budgets on the order of $100 million. By the time it was finally approved, however, the initial 1952 appropriation request had shrunk to $14 million, of which Congress funded only $3.5 million. In contrast, the U.S. Navy alone spent almost $600 million on research and development (R&D) between 1946 and The Politics, and Political Legacy, of Harry S. Truman’s National Security Policies

David C. Unger

The Harry S. Truman administration is often credited, or blamed, for having created something called the American national security state. This label presumably stems from the passage of the National Security Act of 1947, creating several of the federal departments and agencies that have reshaped America’s role in the modern world, notably the Defense Department (merging the long-­standing Departments of War and the Navy), National Security Council (formalizing Franklin D. Roosevelt’s informal coordinating committees), and the Central Intelligence Agency (replacing the World War II Office of Strategic Services).1 This label, however, may be a little misleading. The National Security Act, unlike so much else during the Cold War, represented no formal deviation from traditional constitutional practice. While fierce bureau- cratic politics and intense interservice rivalries shaped the provisions of the National Security Act, there was nothing secretive or sinister about the way the Truman administration conceived it and presented it to Congress, where it was duly debated and enacted into law. The Act did not in itself fundamentally transform the nature of American democracy and governance.2 The National Security Act essentially reorganized previously existing cabinet departments and executive branch agencies. It was scarcely the first such reorganization in response to changing national needs. George Washington’s first cabinet had only four departments—­State, Treasury, War, and Justice. Barack Obama’s now has fifteen.

165 166 David C. Unger

But it is almost futile at this late date to try and supplant such a long familiar term. The law is, after all, called the National Security Act. It does represent a radical shift in Washington’s approach to international affairs and America’s conception of its place in the world. If it did not cre- ate a national security state, it created a new and long-­enduring national security strategy—­a strategy of global containment. Traditional notions of geographically circumscribed American vital interests largely along the Atlantic and Pacific rims gave way to a new globe-­spanning concept of national security. Even before the Act was passed this new concept of global containment was dramatically conveyed to the American people via Truman’s March 12, 1947, address to a joint session of Congress, the famous Truman Doctrine speech. Truman deliberately set out “to scare hell out of the American people” with his ringing summons to American action. It was hype. Truman’s main concern at the time was to rally support from a skeptical Republican-­led Congress for replacing the support Britain was about to withdraw from anti-­Communist forces in Greece and Turkey. But Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Arthur H. Vandenberg [R-­MI] told administration officials that the only way to achieve that was to “scare hell out of the American people.” That also suited the temperament and purpose of Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who believed dramatic overstatement was a necessary and effective way to rally public support. So “scare hell” was just what Truman did with his dire warning that “The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world. And we shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation.”3 Aid to Greece and Turkey was secured. Truman’s immediate purposes were narrow, and he achieved them. But by raising such cosmic and over- reaching alarms, Truman’s speech inflamed the domestic politics of national security in ways he, and future presidents, would find it difficult to cool down. Truman’s new doctrine had inadvertently set America on the path to universal containment, a path that made it hard for generations of American politicians even to debate which interests were vital and which peripheral, where a failure to take a stand endangered America’s own security and where it did not. It was a path that led ultimately to the tragic folly of Vietnam. With the Truman Doctrine and the National Security Act, American diplomacy was henceforth explicitly tethered to military strategy, and the two were institutionally joined in the policy-­making process. That was a departure from long-­standing American tradition prior to Pearl Harbor. Some of those changes started to happen in an ad hoc way during the Second World War. But most Americans assumed that with the return of The Politics, and Political Legacy, of National Security Policies 167 peace, America’s main foreign policy concerns would again be the Western Hemisphere and the Atlantic and Pacific littorals, with the rest of the world parceled out among the other three of Roosevelt’s envisioned Four Policemen—­the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China—­and much of official Washington expected that the State Department would regain its traditional foreign policy–­making predominance. All that changed during the Truman administration, particularly during the event-­filled thirty-­nine months between the Truman Doctrine speech of March 12, 1947, and the U.S. decision to enter the Korean War on June 27, 1950. And, even more significantly for our purposes, during that same period, the fundamental nature of American democracy and governance began to be transformed—­though not fully intentionally—­ through the words and deeds of President Truman and key members of his first and second administrations: Washington officials like Acheson, George C. Marshall, James V. Forrestal, Louis A. Johnson, George F. Kennan, Paul H. Nitze, and Loy W. Henderson; ambassadors like Lincoln McVeigh; and generals like Matthew B. Ridgway and Curtis E. LeMay. Those changes were decisive in creating what can be called the American emergency state.4 Such a state is no longer based on official con- stitutional precepts of war powers shared by the president and the Congress, of institutional checks and balances between the executive and the legis- lature, and of the right of citizens to be informed by their government of all the information they need to make informed democratic decisions about war and peace in general and wars of choice in particular. Instead, America moved, in a more or less ad hoc way, to a new, improvised system based on presidentially declared wars, classified National Security Council directives, and covert intelligence actions. In other words, America slipped the formal moorings of its constitutional democracy and drifted into an ad hoc emergency state.5 This emergency state was not fully formed when Truman left office on January 20, 1953. In particular, the CIA was not yet what Allen Dulles would soon make it. But by the end of the second Truman administration a major departure from America’s constitutional way of war making was well under way, with Truman’s decision to wage the Korean War without a congressional declaration in June 1950 and his subsequent approval of NSC-­68 later that year the two most significant symbols of that change. Along with these came the surge in defense spending and military man- power that Korea made permanent features of the postwar landscape. The remainder of this chapter will examine the Truman administra- tion’s contributions to creating the American emergency state and the con- tinuing legacy of those contributions. Because today, almost twenty-­five An Accidental Empire? President Harry S. Truman and the Origins of America’s Global Military Presence

Aaron B. O’Connell

In July 2003, as the American occupation of Afghanistan stretched into its twentieth month, and the textbook invasion of Iraq began morphing into a textbook insurgency, two esteemed historians met at the American Enterprise Institute to debate whether the United States was an empire or not. Niall Ferguson of Harvard University argued that “militarily, eco- nomically, and culturally, the United States has all the attributes of past empires, and it has them in extremely impressive ways.” The greatest prob- lem, he concluded, is the country’s refusal to acknowledge the power it possesses. Americans “find the ‘E-­word’ almost entirely impossible to utter, so they use euphemisms: great power, hegemon, unipolarity, leader.” The result is “an empire in denial . . . a colossus with an attention deficit disor- der, practicing cut-­price colonization.”1 Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution disagreed. “There is, of course, enormous common ground between a very powerful country and an imperial country,” he admitted, but the key distinguishing feature of empire is intention. The “true definition of empire,” he offered, is a “country that seeks to exercise dominion over others,” and as the United States seeks no such dominion, it cannot properly be called an empire. Moreover, for all its military power and economic wealth, the United States lacks the degree of control over foreign lands that European powers had over their colonies. “In Iraq, it [the United States] cannot bring around any of its putative subjects in Europe, it cannot bring around Turkey, a dependent country on this great empire if ever there was one . . . it cannot bring around Saudi Arabia entirely to support this vital action, what kind of empire is that? . . . I would think that an empire would do a good bit better in ordering its imperial subjects around.”2

189 190 Aaron B. O’Connell

This debate over the so-­called empire question is not new. Since the country’s founding—­and increasingly after 1898—­Americans have sought to contextualize their country’s role in the world, and doing so meant grap- pling with the dreaded “E-­word.”3 As professional historians took up the question during the Cold War, they tended to fall into one of three groups: empire enthusiasts (such as Ferguson, who welcome the label), empire crit- ics (who accept the label but use it pejoratively), and empire skeptics (such as Kagan, who find it ill-­suited to the American experience).4 Other skep- tics’ arguments vary in substance and evidence, but most rehearse claims that are similar to the two made by Kagan—­claims that this chapter seeks to disprove. The first claim is a comparative one: the United States is not an empire because it does not have the same trappings of empires that European empires possessed (formal colonies, a governmental system of colonial administration, cultural production that embraces an imperial role, etc.). The second is an argument about intention: the United States is not an empire because it does not seek to control other territories directly as earlier European powers did. America achieved its dominant position in the world accidentally, the theory goes, more as a consequence of timing and serendipity than active planning.5 Both of these claims are wrong, both historically and conceptually. The first misses the fact that the tools of empire change over time. The United States may not have a colonial office, but it certainly has long had commensurate levers of influence in the world. One need not exert for- mal and direct control in order to have “dominion”—­a copious term that means “sovereign authority” as well as “rule, sway, control, [and] influ- ence.”6 As the world decolonized, President Harry S. Truman and succeed- ing presidents relinquished the former and pursued the latter with great success. Americans may have trouble acknowledging this power but that does not change the fact of its existence. Second, pinning the imperial label to intentions is a tricky business because, simply put, states are not people; they do not have desires or inten- tions. They do, however, have capabilities—­bases, navies, aircraft, and in the case of the United States, military networks that stretch across the entire globe in ways never before seen in the history of the planet. States also have track records—­patterns of conflict that show how they have used their military and economic power to achieve specific ends. A survey of those capabilities and patterns of conflict reveals that the United States has the most robust and effective network of military power in the world and a long track record of using that power to further its global interests. President Truman did not create this network all by himself; much of it existed before he came into office. Nor did he deviate significantly from An Accidental Empire? 191 the earlier tradition of using force to advance American interests outside its borders. Truman’s primary contribution to American empire was to adapt the military infrastructure created during World War II to a new and more expansive purpose. All of this was done intentionally and for the express purpose of increasing the United States’ ability to influence other states.

Imperial Infrastructure Were Julius Caesar, Winston Churchill, or any historical figure familiar with the mechanics of empire to attend a Pentagon briefing on contemporary American military capabilities, he would be deeply impressed. He would learn that the United States accounts for roughly half of all military spend- ing in the world—­about $700 billion per year. He would marvel at the sheer number of overseas military installations: the fifty-­four thousand buildings on 666 overseas base sites, all of which are owned by the United States or leased from forty different countries.7 He would understand implicitly the coercive value of stationing 173,000 military troops outside the United States, and would marvel at how quickly the United States could move those troops and their equipment around the world.8 Were he administratively minded, he would also pour over the Unified Command Plan—­first put in place by President Truman—­which divides every square inch of air, water, and soil on the globe into military commands: Pacific Command (PACOM), European Command (EUCOM), Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), and, later, Northern Command (NORTHCOM), Central Command (CENTCOM), and Africa Command (AFRICOM).9 Other capabilities would be even more impressive. Transiting through those military commands are the various carrier strike groups of the world’s most capable Navy—­a Navy that can travel into, and be the domi- nant presence in, any international waters; a Navy that has no peer com- petitor and whose platforms can stay afloat for months at a time without pulling into a foreign port. Aboard the Navy’s surface vessels are Marine Air-­Ground Task Forces—­modular “force packages” of Marine infantry, helicopters, jets, tanks, amphibious vehicles, and support forces—­that can land on any foreign shore in a matter of hours and stay for weeks, per- forming missions that range from humanitarian relief to sustained combat operations. These capabilities, coupled with the most advanced undersea capabilities in the world, have given the United States a degree of Naval mastery and sea control never before seen in the world.10 Flying through the international airspace of the various combatant commands are aircraft from every single armed service. The Air Force is the most capable of these, and with its fifty-­five hundred aircraft and over The National Security State and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman Enduring Themes

Mark R. Jacobson

The papers in this volume suggest, if nothing else, the enormity of what Harry S. Truman faced during his almost eight years as president of the United States. While the first months of his presidency remain unparal- leled in terms of the challenges he confronted, the subsequent years also included a set of incredibly difficult decisions. Indeed, his presidency seemed to lurch from one crisis to the next as the United States sought to adjust to postwar changes in the international political landscape and the beginning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. But beyond specific policy decisions—­such as the decision to drop the atomic bomb, launch the Marshall Plan, negotiate the North Atlantic Treaty, or integrate the armed forces, among many others—­Truman also had a broader impact on the modern national security structure that policy makers and historians must strive to understand. Specifically, his implementation of the National Security Act of 1947 and its earliest amendments set the stage for a bureau- cratic system that, while undergoing changes in almost every administra- tion since 1952, has guided the United States through the end of the Cold War, during the post–­Cold War turbulence, and now into the post-­9/11 and “post” post-­9/11 worlds.1 The purpose of this brief essay is to remind the reader of what the other contributors to this volume have said about Truman’s policies and legacy, then to suggest some enduring themes for consideration by observers of the current national security environment. Not shy about challenging the conventional wisdom of Truman’s rela- tionship with the armed forces, Dale R. Herspring suggests in his piece, “Setting the Stage: Harry S. Truman and the American Military,” that Truman’s defense policy turned as much on the policy positions of the

212 The National Security State and the Legacy of Harry S. Truman 213

Joint Chiefs of Staff and their services as on executive direction from the White House. Despite strong presidential leadership, he argues, the pace of unification and racial integration of the armed forces was also driven by considerable bureaucratic and political considerations inside the defense establishment—­at least through 1950 and the start of the Korean War. Significantly, Herspring reminds readers of an oft-­forgotten battle that Truman undeniably won: ensuring civilian control over the use of nuclear weapons. In other areas, however, success was more difficult. As Herspring points out, this was the case when it came to unifying the defense establish- ment and integrating the armed forces, though even in those areas Truman set the stage for his successors to institutionalize the policies he favored. In “Preparing for the Next Pearl Harbor: Harry S. Truman’s Role in the Creation of the U.S. National Security Establishment,” Douglas Stuart addresses the broader issue of Truman and the national security state. Stuart tells us that the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, utterly and irrevocably transformed not just the national security structures of the U.S. government but more importantly the mind-­set of the American people. In one moment the isolationism of the interwar years was swept away by “national preparedness” and a standard for success that remains to this day. Leon Panetta, among others, spent much of his time as secretary of defense (2011–­2013) warning of the dangers of a “cyber Pearl Harbor,” attacks that might not only cause physical destruction and loss of life but also “paralyze and shock the nation and create a new, profound sense of vulnerability.”2 It was not Franklin D. Roosevelt but Truman who, in the end, had to deliver on the promise of “no more Pearl Harbors.” The modern system of a unified Department of Defense (DoD), a National Security Council (NSC), and a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was designed to prevent the “next” Pearl Harbor and in the end proved adaptable enough to deal with the Soviet threat through the fall of the Berlin Wall. Indeed, twenty-­five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and twelve years after the attacks of September 11, the most significant structures of this system remain intact. Several authors have noted, however, that some of the most prob- lematic aspects of U.S. national security policy making also remain. Specifically military institutions continue to dominate the policy-­making process, which holds the possibility that American foreign policy could be militarized. In addition to Stuart, Aaron B. O’Connell takes up this issue in “An Accidental Empire? President Harry S. Truman and the Origins of America’s Global Military Presence.” O’Connell writes that Truman’s postwar vision clearly included a large standing military force not only to defend the United States but also to preserve the terms of peace in Europe 214 Mark R. Jacobson

and Asia and the territorial integrity and independence of the Western Hemisphere. Thus, Truman’s interpretation of the common defense would prove much broader than that originally conceived by the framers of the Constitution, and he would leverage the country’s enormous postwar mili- tary capacity to accomplish this broader mission. There were unintended consequences, however: all too frequently the character of U.S. foreign policy would be defined by the level of U.S. military involvement rather than a broader range of diplomatic, economic, and cultural engagement. Similarly, in “The CIA: Its Origin, Transformation, and Crisis of Identity from Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama,” authors Richard H. Immerman and Timothy Andrews Sayle note that sometimes bureaucratic inertia drives organizations away from their originally intended paths. In this case, they argue, the modern CIA’s focus on covert action differs dra- matically from the kind of institution originally envisioned by the Truman administration and Congress in 1947. Immerman and Sayle do not simply acknowledge a conflict between covert action and intelligence in today’s intelligence community, they maintain that the distorted purpose actually began during the Truman era. While there is some room for disagreement in terms of what the priorities should have been or will be, the fact remains that even the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which created the director of National Intelligence, has not truly recon- ciled the tensions originally created during Truman’s first term. Former New York Times correspondent David C. Unger develops themes similar to those explored by Stuart and O’Connell in “The Politics, and Political Legacy, of Harry S. Truman’s National Security Policies.” Unger details how Truman’s national security bureaucracy—­as sanctioned by the U.S. Congress—­became a system that tethered diplomatic efforts to military strategy, a departure from long-­standing American traditions. While the State Department maintained its traditional policy-­making pre- dominance between the end of the Second World War and June 1950, U.S. entry into the Korean conflict marked the start of a transformative shift: the subordination of diplomatic to military strategy and the creation of what Unger calls the American emergency state. Arming and running this “emergency state” cost money, and Benjamin O. Fordham addresses the fiscal dynamics in his essay, “The Legacy of Military Spending during the Truman Administration.” Perhaps most importantly Truman established the tradition of a large standing military force as well as the large peacetime budgets that would become a staple of the Cold War and beyond. Fordham traces not only the level of spend- ing but also the intergovernmental and partisan political conflicts over how funds should be allocated. Indeed, while Democrats and Republicans Contri butors

Benjamin O. Fordham is professor of political science at Binghamton University. He is the author of Building the Cold War Consensus: The Politi- cal Economy of U.S. National Security Policy, 1949–­51 (1998). His current research focuses on the economic sources of political differences over military spending and other national security questions. He was the Henry Alfred Kissinger Scholar in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress 2010–­11.

Mary Ann Heiss is associate professor of history at Kent State Uni- versity. Her publications include Empire and Nationhood: The United States, Great Britain, and Iranian Oil, 1950–­1954 (1997) and coedited volumes on the recent history/future of NATO, U.S. relations with the Third World, and intrabloc conflict within NATO and the Warsaw Pact. A member of the Harry S. Truman Library Institute’s Board of Directors and its Committee on Research, Scholarship, and Education, she has previous- ly served on the Council of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and on the editorial board of its journal, Diplomatic History.

Dale R. Herspring is University Distinguished Professor of Political Sci- ence at Kansas State University. He is the author of more than one hundred books and articles, including Civil-Military­ Relations and Shared Responsibil- ity: A Four-­Nation Study (2013), After Putin’s Russia: Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain (2009), and The Pentagon and the Presidency: Civil-Militar­ y Relations from FDR to George W. Bush (2005). He is also the creator of the Political, Military, and Diplomatic Lecture Series at Kansas State University.

Michael J. Hogan is Distinguished Professor of History at the Uni- versity of Illinois, Springfield. In addition to his service as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and editor of its journal, Diplomatic History, he has also served as chairman of the U.S. De- partment of State’s Advisory Committee on Diplomatic Documentation and as a consultant for the PBS documentary, George C. Marshall and the American Century. Besides numerous scholarly articles and essays, Hogan

225 226 Contri butors

is the author or editor of ten books, including The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947–­1952 (1987) and A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–­1954 (1998). His scholarship has been recognized with the Stuart L. Bernath Lecture and Book Prizes of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Quincy Wright Book Prize of the Inter- national Studies Association, and the George Louis Beer Book Prize of the American Historical Association.

Richard H. Immerman is professor of history, Edward Buthusiem Distinguished Faculty Fellow, and Marvin Wachman Director of the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy at Temple University, where he won the Paul Eberman Faculty Research Award. The recipient of the Stuart Bernath Book and Lecture Prizes from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, he served as SHAFR’s president in 2007. Among his publications are The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (1982), Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (1998), John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and Power in U.S. Foreign Policy (1999), Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz (2012), the Oxford Handbook of the Cold War (2013), and in 2014, The Hidden Hand: A Brief History of the CIA. Immerman was Assistant Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analytic Integrity 2007–­09, currently chairs the Historical Advisory Committee to the Department of State, and is the Francis W. De Serio Visiting Chair in Strategic Intelligence at the Army War College.

Mark R. Jacobson is Senior Transatlantic Fellow, the German Mar- shall Fund of the United States. From 2009 to 2011, he served as Deputy NATO Senior Civilian Representative and Director of International Af- fairs at the NATO International Security Assistance Force headquarters in Afghanistan. He has served in several positions at the Department of De- fense, as a visiting scholar at The Ohio State University’s Mershon Center, as an instructor at the National Defense Intelligence College, as a member of the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and as an adviser to the Truman National Security Project.

Aaron B. O’Connell is associate professor of history at the United States Naval Academy and the author of Underdogs: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps (2012). His primary research interests are the Cold War, American military culture, and the U.S. military’s role in the world in the twentieth century. Contri butors 227

Timothy Andrews Sayle is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Temple University. He was previously the Thomas J. Davis Fel- low in Foreign Policy and Diplomacy at Temple’s Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy.

Randy Sowell is an archivist at the Harry S. Truman Library.

Douglas Stuart holds the J. William and Helen D. Stuart Chair in International Studies at Dickinson College and is an adjunct professor at the U.S. Army War College. His books include Creating the National Secu- rity State (2008), Organizing for National Security (2000), and The Limits of Alliance: NATO Out-­of-­Area Problems since 1949 (1990). He is a former NATO Fellow and State Department Scholar Diplomat. His teaching has been recognized by two awards from Dickinson College, the Distin- guished Teaching Award and the Ganoe Prize for Inspirational Teaching.

David C. Unger is the author of The Emergency State: America’s Pursuit of Absolute National Security at All Costs (2012). He teaches American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe in Bologna, Italy. As a longtime senior foreign affairs editorial writer and editorial board member at the New York Times, he has written more than three thousand editorials on foreign affairs and national security subjects.

Audra J. Wolfe is a writer, editor, and historian based in Philadelphia. Her first book, Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America, was published in 2013. She is currently research- ing a new project on the role of science as a means for cultural diplomacy during the Cold War. She is also the founder of The Outside Reader, an editorial and publishing consulting firm, and has taught courses in the his- tory of science at the University of Pennsylvania. Index Page references in italics indicate illustrations, and t indicates a table.

A atomic energy, 153 academic-­industrial-­military complex. See science Atomic Energy Act (1946), 150 Acheson, Dean G., 167, 180 Atomic Energy Commission. See AEC on China, 178 atomic espionage, 150, 152 on containment, 181 AT&T (American Telephone and Telegraph), 7 influence by, 182 aviation industry, 7 on Korea, 55–­56, 179 B on public messages, 175 B-­36 bombers, 46–­49 on the State Department’s role, 22, 31 B-­70 bombers, 75 on the Truman Doctrine, 166 Baillie, Hugh, 60 Act for International Development (1950), 155 Baldwin, Hanson, 1–­2 admirals’ revolt (1949), 2, 48–­50 Bay of Pigs invasion (1961), 110 AEC (Atomic Energy Commission), 2, 7–­8, 10, behavioral science, 156 143, 146–­47, 150–­51, 159 Bell Laboratories, 153, 161n19 Afghanistan Berkner Report, 155 American occupation of, 180, 189 Berlin blockade (1948–­49), 62, 105–­6, 179 Operation Enduring Freedom, 208n66 Berlin Wall, 213 U.S. military bases in, 198, 206–­7n39 Betts, Richard K., 48 Africa Command (AFRICOM), 191 bin Laden, Osama, 103 African-­Americans’ integration into the military, Bismarck, Otto von, xiv 39, 50–­54 Bissell, Richard, 110 aircraft carriers, 46–­49, 199 Black Panther Party, 159 Air-­Sea Battle, 34n45 Blum, Robert, 135 Albania, 202 Bohlen, Charles E., 170 Albright, Madeleine K., 184 Bosnia, 184 All-­Volunteer Service, 31 Bower, Tom, 160–­61n12 Almond, Gabriel, 79 Bradley, Omar, 46, 49, 52–­53, 58, 61, 102, 140 Al-­Qaeda, 185, 202, 206n26, 222n1. See also Brennan, John, 110–­12 September 11 attacks Bridges, Styles, 44 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 159 Bronk, Detlev, 146 American Enterprise Institute, 189 Brown, Harold, 75–­76, 89n19 American National Election Study. See ANES Buckley, Oliver, 161n19 American Telephone and Telegraph. See AT&T budget ANES (American National Election Study), 79–­ balanced, 6–­7, 74 86, 89n28, 89n30, 90–­91nn31–­35, 91n38 defense spending, 2–­4, 6–­9, 24, 29–­30, Annapolis, 41 34n43, 55, 154, 167–­68 ANZUS treaty (1951), 200, 203 Forrestal on, 46–­47 Applied Physics Laboratory (Johns Hopkins R&D spending, 146, 158 University), 158 See also Cold War; military spending arms race, 152 Bundy, McGeorge, 182 arms trade, 184, 203 Bush, George H. W., 26–­27, 184 Arnold, Henry H., 40–­41 Bush, George W., 32, 206n26, 217, 222 atomic bomb, 40, 46–­47, 107, 150–­52, 171, Bush, Vannevar, 10, 144–­45, 152–­53 178, 220–­22 Byrnes, James F., 40, 98, 198

229 230 Index

C psychological warfare by, 98–­101, 104, 107 California Institute of Technology, 7 under Smith, 107–­8 Carter, Jimmy, 27, 76, 76t, 184, 200 Special Operations Group, 99 Casablanca Conference (1943), 41 Truman on, 134 Castro, Fidel, 110, 202 Watergate role of, 183 CENTO, 200 See also OSS Central Command (CENTCOM), 191 CJCS. See Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Central Intelligence Agency Act (1949), 107–­8 Clausewitz, Karl von, 99 Central Intelligence Group, 95–­97 Clay, Lucius, 103 CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Clifford, Clark M. Research), 154 on CIA covert operations, 98, 113n10 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), 25, National Security Act role of, 128, 128–­30, 47–­48, 77, 139, 140 132, 136–­37, 136–­37, 177 Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Inc., 157, 159 on Royall, 131 Chile, 156, 183 as secretary of defense, 182–­83 China, 30, 34n45. See also People’s Republic of China Clifford-­Elsey report (“American Relations with Christian Democrats (Italy), 100–­101 the Soviet Union”), 11n5 Church, Frank, 107 Cline, Ray, 108 Churchill, Winston S., 40, 169–­72, 196 Clinton, Bill, 77, 89n19, 184 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 94–­115 Clinton, Hillary Rodham, 32 Bay of Pigs invasion by, 110 Colby, William, 107 under Brennan, 110–­12 Cold War, 1–­12 coups orchestrated by, 110 budget debates of, 5–­6 covert operations by, xiv, 20, 27–­28, 95–­105, budgets based on Soviet threat during, 28 107–­9, 114n22, 214 civil-­military relations during, 23–­25 creation of, 20, 45, 62, 95, 97, 165, 213 defense spending expanded during, 24, 214 Directorate of Intelligence, 108 Kennan on, 103 Directorate of Operations, 111 the military’s influence on American youth Directorate of Plans, 108–­9, 111 during, 7 directors of, 97, 100, 107–­8 military solutions to political problems dur- drones used by, 111–­12 ing, xii under Allen Dulles, 109 New Look policy, 6, 181 under Robert Gates, 110–­11 policy initiatives during, 1 (see also Marshall Plan; NATO; Truman Doctrine) goals of, 20, 96–­97 under Reagan, 184 intelligence collection/analysis by, 96–­97, 101–­2, 106, 111–­12, 214 science after, 155–­60 intelligence failures by, 27–­28, 95–­96, 107–­ Truman’s leadership during, 62–­63 8, 111 turn from isolationism/unilateralism to inter- Kennan’s role in, 99 nationalism/collective security, 1–­2 military alternatives to, 103 U.S. military bases overseas, 197–­98 mystery/myths surrounding, 94–­95 vs. violence, 103–­4 National Clandestine Service, 111 Collins, J. Lawton, 57–­58, 140 NSC authority over, 27, 97–­99, 105 colonization, military. See global military pres- ence, U.S. Office of National Estimates, 108 Cominform, 98 OPC (Office of Policy Coordination), 106–­9 Commerce Department, 148–­50 OSO (Office of Special Operations), 108–­9 Committee on Expenditures in the Executive OSP (Office of Special Projects), 105–­6 Departments, 122, 122 overview of, 9–­10 Communism paramilitary activities by, 107–­12 covert operations to stop the spread of, 102 under Petraeus, 111 (see also under CIA) portrayals of, 94–­95, 110 in Czechoslovakia, 99, 103 Index 231

Democrats as “soft” on, 214–­15 Devers, Jacob L., 51 FDR and the Communist threat, 173 Directorate of Intelligence, 108 in Korean War, 58–­60, 180 Directorate of Operations, 111 Truman Doctrine’s goal of containing, xv, 10, Directorate of Plans, 108–­9, 111 176, 180, 182 director of central intelligence (DCI), 97–­98, Communist International, 98 104, 107–­8, 217 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1999), 77 DOD. See Defense Department Computer People for Peace, 158 dominion, 190. See also global military presence, U.S. computers, 153 domino theory, 4, 174 Conant, James B., 161n19 Donovan, William (“Wild Bill”), 95, 106 Condon, Edward U., 149–­50 Doolittle, James, 109–­10 conscription. See the draft the draft, 4, 7, 21, 52, 159, 180 Constitution Draper, Charles, 157 Article I, 45, 216 drones, 111–­12, 219–­20 Article II, 216 DuBridge, Lee, 146, 161n19 military establishment’s threat to, 2 Dujmovic, Nicholas, 113n10 on war powers, 185 Dulles, Allen, 102–­3, 106, 108–­10, 112, 167 Correa, Matthew, 102 Dulles, John Foster, 56, 102, 181 Craig, Campbell, 28 E Crommelin, John G., 48 Eberstadt, Ferdinand A., 19–­21, 42, 177 Cyber Command, 192 Eberstadt Report, 19–­20, 42–­43 cyberspace, 218 Economic Cooperation Act (1948), 176. See also Czechoslovakia, Communist coup in (1948), Marshall Plan 99, 103 Economic Cooperation Administration, 154 D Eighth Army, 54, 59–­60 Daalder, Ivo H., 27 Eisenhower, Dwight D. (“Ike”) Dalfiume, Richard M., 50–­51 actions abroad vs. at home, 27 debt as a threat to national security, 30 on aircraft carriers, 48 Defense Department (DOD) on budget deficits, 6, 74 annual reports (1978–­1979), 76, 76t Cold War goals of, 181–­82 creation of, 19, 45, 139, 165, 213 defense treaties signed under, 200 R&D spending by, 146, 158 on institution building and budget making, 6 Special Operations Command, 103 intelligence collection fostered by, 109–­10 See also National Military Establishment; on Korea, 181 U.S. military and specific branches military bases established by, 198 defense spending, 2–­4, 6–­9, 24, 29–­30, 34n43, on the military-­industrial complex, 6, 69, 55, 154, 167–­68. See also military spending 143, 182 Democratic Party on the National Security Act, 45, 177–­78 on defense policy, 74–­75 on the NSC, 25, 34n31 election wins (1948), 178 nuclear weapon policy of, 40, 75 on macroeconomic policy, 9, 73–­74, 87 reputation/military record of, 182 selection of military officers by, 77 Royall’s meeting with, 130–­31 as “soft” on Communism, 214–­15 on scientific research, 147 denazification of German scientists, 147–­49, short-­of-­war incidents under, 202 160–­61n12 on unification of armed forces, 41 Denfeld, Louis, 46–­50 electronics industry, 153–­54 Department of Defense Reorganization Act Elsey, George M., 21, 177 (1986), 216–­17 Embick, Stanley D., 198 Depression, 171 emergency state, 167–­68, 185–­86, 214 Destler, I. M., 27 Engineers Joint Council, 153 détente, 184, 202 European Command (EUCOM), 191 232 Index

European Organization for Nuclear Research Gates, Robert M., 31, 110–­11 (CERN), 154 General Advisory Committee (GAC), 151, Executive Order 9835 (1947), 149 161n19 Executive Order 9981 (1948), 52 General Electric, 7 exorbitant privilege, 30, 34n49 George, Alexander L., 39 F Gillem Board, 51 Gimbel, John, 160–­61n12 Fahy, Charles H., 53 Giscard d’Estaing, Valery, 34n49 Fair Deal, 183, 185 global military presence, U.S., 189–­208 Fast Sealift Ships, 192 as an accidental empire, xv, 189, 203–­5, FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), 97, 181, 183 205n5 Ferguson, Niall, 189–­90 defense treaties and military assistance, xiv, Fermi, Enrico, 161n19 196, 199–­201, 203–­4, 207n44, 207n50 fission bomb. See atomic bomb and empire, meanings of, 189–­90, 204 Fluid Mechanics Laboratory (MIT), 157–­58 imperial infrastructure of, 191–­92, flush-­deck carriers, 46–­49 205nn11–­12 Ford, Gerald R., 76, 76t, 184 imperial intentions behind, xv, 192–­95, Fordham, Benjamin, 9, 214–­15 205n14 Foreign Assistance Act (1961), 27 imperial operations of, xiv, 201–­2 formalistic leadership model, 39–­40 for a lasting peace, 193–­94 Forrestal, James V., 133, 138, 167 military bases overseas, xiv, 195–­99, 206n26, African-­Americans integrated into Navy by, 50 206–­7n39 on budgeting, 46–­47 military-­to-­military funding, 196 Eberstadt Report commissioned by, 19 overview of, 10, 189–­91, 204–­5 Key West Conference held by, 46 short-­of-­war incidents, 196, 201–­2 National Security Act role of, 132, 133, 177 wars/invasions/bombing campaigns, 204, on the NSC, 19 208n66 at NSC meeting, 135 Global Positioning System, 72 on the NSRB, 20 Goldwater-­Nichols Department of Defense on Pacific military bases, 197 Reorganization Act (1986), 25 on psychological warfare, 98, 103 Gray, Gordon, 53 resignation of, 47 Great Britain, 96, 148, 168–­74, 194 as secretary of defense, 20, 131–­32, 177 Greece as secretary of the Navy, 18, 42 aid to, 166, 173–­75 (see also Truman Doc- on semiwarfare, 100, 177 trine) suicide by, 47, 138 civil war in, 172 on unification of armed forces, 19, 42, 44, in NATO, 199–­200 123–­24, 123–­25, 126 Group of Twenty (G-­20), 30 Forrestal, Michael, 182 Groves, Leslie, 150 Founding Fathers, 2–­3, 185 Gruenther, A. M., 135 Fuchs, Klaus, 152 Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), 196, 206n26 “Fundamentals of U.S. Foreign Policy” (Truman), Guatemala, CIA-­orchestrated coup in, 110, 202 193–­95, 198 Guzmán, Jacobo Arbenz, 110 fusion bomb. See hydrogen bomb H Fussell, Paul, 221–­22 Haass, Richard N., 32 G Harriman, W. Averell, 169–­71, 182 GAC (General Advisory Committee), 151, Hayden, Michael, 112 161n19 Haynes, Richard F., 60–­63 Gaddis, John Lewis, 17, 27 Helms, Richard, 109 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 153 Henderson, Loy W., 167 Gates, Clifton B., 49 Herspring, Dale, 9, 212–­13 Index 233

Hill, Arthur M., 21, 135 Japanese electronics companies, 153–­54 Hillenkoetter, Roscoe, 100, 103–­7, 135 JCS. See Joint Chiefs of Staff Hitachi, 154 Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-­shek), 56, 178 Hitler, Adolf, 148, 170–­71 Johns Hopkins University, 158 Hogan, Michael J., 21, 43 Johnson, Louis A., 48–­49, 53, 55, 64n35, 138–­ Hoover, Herbert, 5 39, 167 Hoover, J. Edgar, 181 Johnson, Lyndon B., 87, 171, 178, 180, 182–­83, Hopkins, Harry L., 168, 170 202 House Armed Services Committee, 48–­49 Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) House Committee on Un-­American Activities on aircraft carriers, 48–­49 (HUAC), 150 at Casablanca, 41 Houston, Lawrence, 98 conference room at the Pentagon, 140 HUAC (House Committee on Un-­American on defense budgets, 6 Activities), 150 Korean War role of, 54–­60 Hughes-­Ryan Act (1974), 27 MacArthur dismissed by, 60–­61 humanitarian crises, 219 members of, 47, 140, 140 Hungarian uprising (1956), 114n22 National Security Act’s impact on, 45–­47 Hunt, Linda, 160–­61n12 Truman’s battles with, 39 Huntington, Samuel P.: The Soldier and the State, and the unification debate, 39, 41–­48, 124 23–­24 use of term, 127 Hyanes, Richard F., 60 See also Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff hydrogen bomb, 150–­52, 160, 161n22 Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 151 I Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC; Great Brit- ain), 96 IBM (International Business Machines), 7 Immerman, Richard H., 9–­10, 214 K imperialism, military. See global military presence, Kagan, Robert, 189–­90, 205n4 U.S. Kean, William, 54 Inchon, Battle of (South Korea, 1950), 57, 180 Kennan, George F., 32, 167 industrial-­military-­academic complex. See science on CIA covert operations, 101 Inman, Bobby Ray, 111 CIA role of, 99 Institute for Defense Analysis, 156, 159 on the Cold War, 103 Instrumentation Laboratory (MIT), 157 as director of the Policy Planning Staff, 100, 180 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act and FDR, 170 (2004), 214 on militarization of foreign policy, 24 Intelligence Survey Group, 102–­3, 106 on the OSP, 105–­6 Inter-­American Foreign Ministers Meeting (Bo- on political warfare, 99–­101 gotá, Colombia), 107–­8 on psychological warfare, 101 International Business Machines (IBM), 7 telegram to the secretary of state, 11n5 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Kennedy, John F. 206–­7n39 actions abroad vs. at home, 27 Internet security, 218 on containment, 182 Iran, 110, 172 on conventional forces, 75, 87 Iran–­Contra scandal (1985–­1987), 184 Cuban policy of, 183 Iraq, U.S. military bases in, 198, 207n39 flexible response strategy of, 6 Iraq War (2003), 86–­87, 180, 189, 208n66 military spending under, 74 isolationism, 18, 79–­81, 89–­90n30, 213 on the national security state, 177–­78 J and science for the public good, 155 Jackson, Henry, 34n31 short-­of-­war incidents under, 202 Jackson, William, 102, 108–­9 Vietnam policy of, 178, 183 Jacobson, Mark, 10–­11 Kenney, W. John, 135 Kerry, John, 35n56 234 Index

Keynesianism, 74, 180, 182 U.S. fondness for short-­of-­war actions, Keyserling, Leon, 74 219–­20 Key West Conference (1948), 46 See also politics/political legacy of national Kilgore, Harley M., 144–­45 security policies King, Ernest J., 40–­41 LeMay, Curtis E., 167 Kissinger, Henry, 33n17, 183 Lemnitzer, Lyman L., 55 Korean War, 1, 6, 219 limited war concept, 63 Battle of Inchon, 57, 180 Limited War Study Committee, 74–­75 Communist Chinese troops in, 58–­60, 180 Lincoln, Abraham, 222 defense spending after, 167–­68 Lincoln, George A., 23 MacArthur’s role in, 54–­61, 63, 180 Lippmann, Walter, 79 military-­related foreign aid during, 201 Locher, James R., III, 46 North Korean invasion of the South, 25, 54–­ Logevall, Fredrik, 28 55, 107–­8, 179 Los Alamos. See Manhattan Project public support for, 81–­83, 90n33, 180 Lovett, Robert A., 182 racial integration of the military fostered by, 54 loyalty oaths/security clearances, 149–­50, 152, 181 R&D spending during, 146 M Truman’s role in, 55–­63, 179–­80 MAAGs (Military Assistance Advisory Groups), U.S. entry into, 167, 208n66 200, 203, 207n50 Kuwait, 184 MacArthur, Douglas L defiance by, 2, 60 Lake, Tony, 184 dismissal of, 39, 59–­61, 63, 217 Laos, paramilitary operations in, 75, 109, 200–­ at Japanese surrender, 121, 121 202, 208n66 Korean War role of, 54–­61, 63, 179–­80 Lasby, Clarence G., 160–­61n12 Truman’s meeting with, 217 League for Non-­Violent Civil Disobedience MacGregor, Morris, J., Jr., 54 against Military Segregation, 52 Madison, James, 222 League of Nations, 179 Magnuson, Warren, 144–­45 Leahy, William D., 40–­41 Manhattan Project (Los Alamos, NM), 146, legacy of Truman’s national security state, 212–­23 149–­50, 152, 161n19, 161n22 bureaucratic acquiescence needed for bureau- Mansfield Amendment to the Military Authoriza- cratic change, 216–­17 tion Act, 158 congressional role in defense/foreign policy, 216 Mao Zedong, 175, 178 covert action vs. intelligence gathering, 214 Marine Air-­Ground Task Forces, 191 demographic changes, 8 Markusen, Ann, 8 evaluating, xii–­xiv, 61–­63 Marshall, George C., 167 overview of, xv, 10–­11, 212–­15, 222 African-­American integration investigated by, 51 policy making by military institutions, on the atomic bomb, 40 213–­14 on the JCS, 41 preparedness, 213 Korean War role of, 57 president as commander in chief, 220–­22 on military funding, 18 presidential decisions made deliberately, 218–­19 National Security Act role of, 177 presidential influence as limited, 217 NSC role of, 19, 135 president’s relationship with the troops, at Potsdam Conference, 40 217–­18, 222 on psychological warfare, 98 private-­public partnerships for addressing on the State Department’s role, 31 emerging threats, 218 Marshall Plan, 1, 127, 154, 176, 212 unevenness of, xiv–­xv Martin, Joe, 60 uncertainty as costly, 218 Marxism, 175, 183 unification debates, 212–­13 Masaryk, Jan, 99 U.S. as a global power, 215–­16 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. See MIT Index 235

Mathews, Francis P., 48–­49 National Science Foundation (NSF) Act (1950), McCarthy, Joseph R., 179, 181 10, 24, 145. See also NSF McGrath, J. Howard, 181 National Security Act (1947) McNamara, Robert S., 25, 182 architects of, 177 McVeigh, Lincoln, 167 institutions established by, 19–­20, 31, 45, 62, MI5 (Great Britain), 96 97, 165, 213 MI6 (Great Britain), 96 JCS affected by, 45–­47 military. See global military presence, U.S.; U.S. national security state created by, 165–­66, military; and specific branches 176–­78 Military Assistance Advisory Groups (MAAGs), passage of, 128, 128–­30, 130–­31, 165 200, 203, 207n50 problems caused by, 32 Military Authorization Act (1970), 158 reforms to, 19, 24–­25, 47 military spending, 68–­91 Truman’s signing of, 131–­32, 131–­33 calculations of, 69, 88nn3–­4 See also National Security Amendments under Carter vs. Ford, 76, 76t National Security Agency (NSA), 109 and the economy, 70, 71, 72–­74, 77, 85–­87, National Security Amendments (1949), 136–­37, 88n5 136–­37, 139, 140 under Eisenhower, 182 National Security Council (NSC) as foreign aid, 201 CIA under authority of, 27, 97–­99, 105 and foreign policy activism, 80–­81, 86–­88, creation of, 19–­20, 45, 165, 213 90–­91nn31–­34 Deputies Committee, 26 under Kennedy, 182 goals of, 40 and mobilization, 69–­73, 77–­78, 86–­87 growth/influence of, 25–­26, 135 overview of, 9, 68–­69, 86–­88 management of, 26–­27, 34n31 politics of, 9, 73–­78, 76t, 87, 89n19, 214–­15 NSC-4, 98 public opinion affected by, 78–­79, 87–­88, NSC-10/2, 101, 104–­6 89n28, 89–­91nn30–­35, 91n38 NSC-68, 11n5, 74, 167, 180–­81, 184 and state power over domestic politics, 84–­ Principals Committee, 26 88, 91n35, 91n38 State Department’s role in, 22, 33n17 and support for war, 81–­83, 87–­88, See also CIA 89–­91nn32–­34 national security ideology, 3–­6, 11n5 U.S. vs. worldwide, 190 National Security Resources Board (NSRB), 20–­ during WWII, 70, 72 21, 24–­25, 62, 124 military-­university-­science-­industry-­Congress National Security Strategy (2010), 30–­31 (MUSIC) complex, 9, 24. See also science NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), 1, missiles, 192, 205n12 179, 199–­200, 203, 222n1 MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), 7, Naval Research Laboratory, 146 143, 157–­58, 161n19 Navas, William A., 28–­29 Monroe Doctrine, 5, 169 Nazis, 143, 147–­48, 194 Mossadegh, Mohammed, 110 Neal, Steve, 59 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 27 New Deal, 8, 95, 145, 155 Mullen, Mike, 30 New Look policy, 6, 181 N New York Times, 1–­2, 50 National Bureau of Standards, 149–­50 Nimitz, Chester W., 44, 62, 121, 121 National Clandestine Service, 111 9/11 attacks (2001). See September 11 attacks National Committee for Free Europe, 107 NIPA (National Income and Product Accounts), National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), 69, 88n3 69, 88n3 Nitze, Paul H., 75, 167, 180 National Intelligence Authority, 95 Nixon, Richard M., 33n17, 178, 180–­81, 183–­ National Military Establishment, 19, 62, 97, 137, 84, 202 139, 204. See also Defense Department Norstad, Lauris, 131 North Atlantic Treaty Organization. See NATO 236 Index

Northern Command (NORTHCOM), 191 P North Korea. See Korean War Pacific Command (PACOM), 191 NSC. See National Security Council Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, 7 NSF (National Science Foundation), 10, 24, Panetta, Leon, 213 144–­47, 149, 153, 156, 159–­60, 163 Patterson, Robert, 123–­24, 123–­25, 126, 130–­31 NSRB. See National Security Resources Board Patton, George S., 50 nuclear weapons, 61, 73, 75–­76, 192. See also peace/freedom atomic bomb; hydrogen bomb domino theory of, 4 Nunn-­Cohen Amendments (1987), 216–­17 as indivisible, 4 O lasting peace, 181, 193–94 Obama, Barack, 216 Pearl Harbor attack (1941), 17–­18, 22, 95, 121, cabinet of, 165 213, 221 on the CIA, 112 Pearl Harbor system, 17–­35 as commander in chief, 222 evolution of, 22–­28 on drones, 111 institutions created, 19–­20 national security strategy of, 30–­31, 185 institutions not created, 20–­22 travels to meet with his commanders, 217–­18 and the militarization of foreign policy, 29–­31 troops surge in Afghanistan ordered by, 219 overview of, 8–­9, 17–­22 on the war on terror, 32 preparedness in, 18–­19, 21, 24, 28, 213 O’Connell, Aaron, 10, 213–­14, 215 vs. today’s system, 28–­33 Office of International Scientific Affairs, 155 and unification of armed forces in, 18–­19 Office of National Estimates, 108 See also CIA; National Security Council Office of Naval Research. See ONR Pearlman, Michael, 57 Office of Reports and Estimates (ORE), 96–­97 Pearson, Drew, 47 Office of Strategic Services. See OSS People’s Republic of China, 56, 178–­79, 181, Office of the Director of National Intelligence 183, 193, 202, 204 (ODNI), 217 Perry, Mark, 58 ONR (Office of Naval Research), 10, 143, 146–­ Perry, William, 89n19 47, 158, 160 Petraeus, David, 111 OPC (Office of Policy Coordination), 106–­9 Philippines, 195, 200, 202, 207n50 Operation Allied Force (Kosovo), 208n66 Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System, 25 Operation Deliberate Force (Bosnia), 208n66 Point Four program, 143–­44, 152, 154–­55 Operation Desert Fox (Iraq), 208n66 Poland, 170 Operation Downfall (Japan), 220 political warfare, 99–­101, 105–­7 Operation El Dorado Canyon (Libya), 208n66 politics/political legacy of national security poli- Operation Enduring Freedom, 208n66 cies, 165–­87 Operation Infinite Reach (Afghanistan and anti-­interventionism, 168, 171, 174 Sudan), 208n66 bipartisanship on foreign policy, 183–­84 Operation Just Cause (Panama), 208n66 and China’s “loss,” 178, 183 Operation Menu (Laos and Cambodia), 208n66 domino theory, 174, 183 Operation Odyssey Dawn (Libya), 208n66 emergency state, 167–­68, 185–­86, 214 Operation Power Pack (Dominican Republic ), internationalism, 168–­73, 179 208n66 overview of, 10, 165–­66 Operation Urgent Fury (Grenada), 208n66 Potsdam Big Three Conference, 40, 172, Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 151–­52, 161n22 196–­97 ORE (Office of Reports and Estimates), 96–­97 semiwarfare, 100, 177 OSO (Office of Special Operations), 108–­9 universal containment, 10, 166, 174–­75, OSP (Office of Special Projects), 105–­6 178–­79, 181–­85 OSS (Office of Special Services), 104 universal credibility, 183 OSS (Office of Strategic Services), 18, 94–­95, and the war on terror, 184–­85 99–­100, 102–­3, 107 wartime presidential powers, 179–­80, 185–­86 Index 237

See also legacy of Truman’s national security Ridgway, Matthew B., 54, 58–­59, 167 state; Marshall Plan; Truman Doctrine Rio Pact (Inter-­American Treaty of Reciprocal Popular Alliance (Italy), 100–­101 Assistance; 1947), 199, 203, 207n44 Potsdam Big Three Conference (1945), 40, 172, Rockefeller Foundation, 154 196–­97 Rogers, William, 33n17 Powell, Colin L., 25, 184 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 167 presidential powers, wartime, 179–­80, 185–­86 as commander in chief, 222 President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and the Communist threat, 173 and Opportunity in the Armed Forces death of, 40, 169 (Fahy Committee), 53 on free trade, 170 Princeton University, 156 health of, 168 Project Camelot, 156 institutional power centers avoided by, 177 Project Hindsight, 159–­60 internationalist strategy of, 168–­73, 179 Project on National Security Reform, 29 on a lasting peace, 181 Project Overcast, 148 leadership style of, 41 Project Paperclip, 148–­49 popularity/stature of, 171 psychological warfare, 98–­101, 103, 104, 107 as pro-­Navy, 42 Q reelection of, 172 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development role in global military presence, 203 Review, 32 and Truman, 168–­69 R Roosevelt, Theodore, 171 ROTC (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps), 7 Rabi, I. I., 161n19 Royall, Kenneth C., 52–­53, 103–­4, 130–­31, Radford, Arthur W., 48–­49, 64n35 133, 135 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 109, 114n22 Rumsfeld, Donald H., 25, 87 RAND Corporation, 143 Rusk, Dean, 182 Randolph, A. Philip, 52 Russell, Richard, 221 Raytheon, 7 RCA, 153–­54 S Reagan, Ronald W., 77, 85, 184 satellites in space, 191–­92, 205n11 Red Sox/Red Cap, 114n22 Sayle, Timothy Andrews, 9–­10, 214 “Relations between Secret Operations and Secret science, 143–­62 Intelligence,” 102 arms race, 152 Republican Party atomic research, 146, 149–­50, 161n19 (see Act for International Development opposed also AEC; Manhattan Project) by, 155 Cold War consensus on, 155–­60 on China, 178 Eisenhower on the military-­industrial com- conservatives in, 2–3,­ 73, 77 plex, 6, 69 on defense policy, 74–­75, 77 German scientists post–­WWII, 147–­49, discursive tradition of, 2 160–­61n12 election losses (1948), 178 hydrogen bomb development, 150–­52, 160, 161n22 election wins (1946 and 1950), 172–­73, 181 loyalty oaths/security clearances for, 149–­50, on macroeconomic policy, 9, 73–­74, 87 152, 181 on the OSS, 95 military/defense research, xii selection of military officers by, 77 military’s partnership with universities and in- Republic of China (Taiwan), 200, 207n50 dustrial labs, 7, 143–­44, 153–­59, 161n19 Republic of Korea (South Korea), 200, 203, 207n50 national security served by, 147–­52, 160–­ Research and Development Board, 146–­47 61n12, 161n19, 161n22 Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), 7 overview of, 8–­10, 143–­44, 160, 215 responsibility to protect, 219 patent licensing, 154 Rhee, Syngman, 57 political activism about, 158–­59 238 Index

science, continued Lend Lease shipments to, 171 political economy of postwar science, 144–­ public opinion on cooperation with, 83, 88, 47, 158 90–­91n34 for the public good, 152–­55 (see also Point and short-­of-­war incidents, 202 Four program) UN boycotted by, 56 See also MIT U.S. conflict with, 155 (see also Cold War) Science and Public Policy, 145 U.S. military bases used to contain, 197 Science for the People, 158–­59 withdrawal from Eastern Europe, 184 Science for Vietnam, 158 “Special Message to Congress on Greece and Scowcroft, Brent, 27 Turkey: The Truman Doctrine” (Tru- seabasing, 199 man), 11n5 Seaborg, Glenn T., 159, 161n19 Special Operations Research Organization, 156 SEATO, 200 Spruance, Raymond, 198 secretary of defense, status/influence of, 24–­25 Stalin, Josef, 40, 55, 169–­72, 176, 181–­82, security clearances/loyalty oaths, 149–­50, 152, 181 196–­97, 200 selective service. See the draft Stanford University, 7 semiconductors, 154 State Department Senate Armed Services Committee, 49 budget cuts for, 35n56 Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Bureau of Intelligence and Research, 97 Operations with Respect to Intelligence on denazification of German scientists, 148 Activities, 107 Korean role of, 55 September 11 attacks (2001) marginalization of, 31–­32 classified military operations after, 202 vs. the military, xii end of military operations based on, 212, Office of Policy Planning, 180 222n1 Policy Planning Staff, 22, 32, 100, 104–­5 and fear-­ vs. threat-­based foreign policy, 32 science policy of, 155 intelligence failures surrounding, 27–­28, 217 traditional role of, 22, 31 military bases after, 198 State- ­War-­Navy Coordinating Committee and the Pearl Harbor system, 28–­29 (SWNCC), 18, 148 post-­9/11 world, 212, 222n1 Steelman, John R., 21 and the war on terror, 32, 184–­85 Stern, Eric, 39 Shapiro, Ascher, 157 Stevenson, Adlai E., 181 Sherman, Forrest, 140 Stimson, Henry L., 40, 95 Silicon Valley, 7 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 30 Skybolt air-­launched missile, 75 Strategic Policy Section (Operations Division, Smith, Walter Bedell, 107–­9 U.S. Army), 23 Social Sciences Department (West Point), 23 Strategic Studies Institute (U.S. Army War Col- social scientific research, 156 lege), 29 The Soldier and the State (Huntington), 21, 23 Strauss, Lewis, 151–­52 Sony, 154 Stuart, Douglas, 8–­9, 213–­14 Souers, Sidney W., 25, 27, 134–­35, 134–­35 student protests against universities’ military Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), 191 contracts, 156–­57, 159 South Korea. See Korean War; Republic of Korea submarines, nuclear-­powered, 199 Soviet Union Sullivan, John L., 48, 133 anti-­Western propaganda by, 98 SWNCC (State-­War-­Navy Coordinating Com- atomic bomb testing by, 107–­8, 150, 178–­79 mittee), 18, 148 Berlin blockaded by, 62, 105–­6, 179 Sylvania, 7 collapse of, 70, 77, 86 Symington, W. Stuart, 49, 133 influence in Italy, 100–­101 T intervention in Hungarian uprising, 114n22 Taft, Robert A., 1, 5, 73, 173, 176 in Iran, 172 Technical Cooperation Agency (TCA), 155 Index 239

Teller, Edward, 150–­51 on unification of armed forces, 18–­19, 41, Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 154–­55 43–­44, 61–­62, 121–­25, 122, 125, 127, 127 thermonuclear weapons (hydrogen bomb), 150–­ on U.S. role in the world, 193–­94 52, 160, 161n22 as vice president, 168–­69 Thomas, Evan, 107, 110 on WWII, 220–­21 Thomas, J. Parnell, 150 Truman Doctrine, 1 3-­D printing, 218 anti-­communist/containment goals of, xiii, Toshiba, 154 10, 176, 180, 182 total war, 3–­4 foreign aid legacy of, 184, 201 transistors, solid-­state, 153–­54 and military-­related foreign aid, 201 Transportation Command (TRANSCOM), 192 origins of, 172 Truman, Harry S. speech on, 166, 184 actions abroad vs. at home, 27 Arthur Vandenberg’s support of, 127, 166 African-­American vote courted by, 51–­52 Turkey on the atomic bomb, 40, 150–­52, 220–­21, aid to, 166, 173–­75 (see also Truman Doctrine) 223n5 in NATO, 199–­200 on budget deficits, 6, 74 TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), 154–­55 on China, 178 U on the CIA, 134 Ukraine, 202 on civil rights, 51–­52 UMT (universal military training), 4–­5, 21, 23, 193 as commander in chief, 222 Unger, David C., 10, 214, 218–­19 vs. Congress, 62–­63 Unified Command Plan, 191 on corporate profiteering from military buildup, 181 unipolarity, 70 decisions made deliberately by, 218–­19 United Nations, 194 early presidency of, 169–­72, 212 FDR’s plans for, 174, 179 election of, 40–­41, 178 and the Korean War, 56, 179 Executive Order 9981 issued by, 52 peacekeeping mission of, 123 “Fundamentals of U.S. Foreign Policy,” Security Council, 55, 170 193–­95, 198 and Soviet containment, 195, 197 Korean War role of, 55–­63, 220 United States as an empire. See global military on a lasting peace, 193–­94 presence, U.S. leadership style of, 9, 39–­40, 54, 63, 218–­19 Universal Military Training (UMT), 4–­5, 21, 23, 193 MacArthur’s meeting with, 217 University of Wisconsin–­Madison, 156 on military bases overseas, 196–­97 uranium, 150 on military overspending, 30 U.S. Air Force on military strength, need for, 194–­95 aircraft/satellites of, 191–­92 NSC-68 approved by, 180–­81 creation of, 21, 133 NSC role of, 19–­20, 25, 40, 135 integrating African-­Americans into, 52–­53 on the NSRB, 21 JCS role of, 42 on nuclear weapons, 61 missiles owned by, 205n12 OSS abolished by, 95 nuclear-­weapons handling by, 46–­47, 61 popularity of, 172, 181 vs. U.S. Navy, 44–­50, 121 at Potsdam Conference, 40, 196–­97 U.S. Army on preparedness, 18 on denazification of German scientists, 148, as pro-­Army, 42 160–­61n12; G-­2, 103 on racial equality, 61 integrating African-­Americans into, 39, on scientific research, 145 50–­54, 61 “Special Message to Congress on Greece and JCS role of, 42–­43 Turkey: The Truman Doctrine,” 11n5 vs. Marine Corps, 49 on UMT, 21, 23 Military Intelligence Division, 97 240 Index

U.S. Army, continued and the garrisons state, 68 political-­military plans of, 23 Lyndon B. Johnson’s role in, 87 in short-­of-­war incidents, 201 public support for, 81–­83, 90nn32–­33, 180 social scientific research by, 156 spending associated with, 71 Special Forces, 103 as unpopular/unwinnable, 27, 157 on unification of armed forces, 43, 124 war powers after, 216 See also U.S. Air Force Vinson, Fred, 133, 138 U.S.–­Japanese security treaty (1951), 200 von Braun, Wernher, 147–­48 U.S. Marine Corps, 42–­46, 49–­50, 61–­62, 122–­ W 24, 201 U.S. military, 39–­65 Wallace, Henry, 172 American confidence in, 31, 34–­35n52 War Department, 51, 147–­48 civil-­military relations, 23–­24, 31, 43 Warner, John, 205n14 global strike capability of, 192 war on terror, 32, 184–­85 integrating African-­Americans into, 39, 50–­54 War Powers Act (1973), 183 leaks of information by, 62 War Powers Resolution (1973), 202 MacArthur and the Korean War, 54–­61, 63, 180 War Scare (1948), 103 overview of, 9, 39 wartime presidential powers, 179–­80, 185–­86, 216, 219–­20 and presidential leadership style, 39–­40, 54, 63 Washington, George, 165–­66, 222 Revolt of the Admirals, 2, 48–­50 Watergate, 183 and Truman’s election, 40–­41 Westinghouse, 153 Truman’s legacy, evaluating, xi–­xii, 61–­63 West Point, 23, 41 unification of, 18–­19, 39, 41–­48, 61–­62, 121–­27, 122–­27 (see also National Whitney, Cornelius, 135 Security Act). Williams, William Appleman, 203 See also global military presence, U.S.; Wilson, Valerie Plame, 94 military spending; and specific branches of Wilson, Woodrow, 68, 168, 179, 222 the military Wisner, Frank, 106–­10, 112 U.S. Naval Observatory, 146 Wolfe, Audra J., 10, 215 U.S. Navy Wolfers, Arnold, 17 vs. Air Force, 44–­50, 121 Woolf, Virginia, 203, 207n63 carrier strike groups of, 191 World War II global reach of, 193 Army–­Navy rivalry during, 121 integrating African-­Americans into, 50, 52–­53 casualties of, 220 on the JCS, 47–­48 Japanese surrender, 121, 121 nuclear-­weapons handling by, 46–­47 military infrastructure created during, 190 Office of Naval Intelligence, 103 military spending during, 70, 72 R&D by, 145–­47 Pearl Harbor attack, 17–­18, 22, 95, 121 Revolt of the Admirals, 2, 48–­50 U.S. military bases overseas, xii, 195–­97 SEALs, 103 vengeance against Japan urged, 221 in short-­of-­war incidents, 201 See also atomic bomb on unification of armed forces, 39, 42–­44, Y 61, 124 Yalta Conference (1945), 169–­71 See also U.S. Marine Corps U.S.-­Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty (1951), 200 Z V Zegart, Amy B., 27, 96 Vandenberg, Arthur H., 127, 166, 173–­74, 176, 183 Vandenberg, Hoyt S., 46, 59, 97, 140 Veterans Administration, 7–­8 Vietnam War, 166, 208n66, 215 George H. W. Bush on, 184