The United States & the Beginning of the Cold War Arms Race
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THE UNITED STATES & THE BEGINNING OF THE COLD WAR ARMS RACE The Truman Administration's Arms Build-Up of 1950-1951 Submitted for the PhD in International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science by Raymond Ojserkis UMI Number: U615556 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI U615556 Published by ProQuest LLC 2014. Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 /H £S F ABSTRACT This dissertation deals with the American military build-up of 1950-1951, a crucial event in starting the Cold War arms race. It examines the decision to initiate the arms build-up, and some consequences of that decision. In considering the beginning of the arms build-up, it accounts for the influence of external events, such as Soviet and European capabilities and actions, as well as internal factors, including public pressure and lobbying. In doing so, it seeks to assess the relative importance of the object being perceived, the Soviet military, and the lens through which that object was viewed, the political culture of the American foreign policy establishment. The dissertation makes critical judgements as to the timing, nature, and cause of the arms build-up. It argues that the critical period was between 25 June 1950 and 19 September 1950, that the decisive influence came from the President, and not from the military, and that it was the perception of the Soviet threat in Central Europe that was important, not the war in Korea. iii CONTENTS PREFACE PAGE 1 INTRODUCTION PAGE 7 POST-WAR DEMOBILISATION PAGE 14 1.1 American Demobilisation, 1945 to Early 1948 1.2 Western European Military Preparedness, VE Day to Early 1947 1.3 Soviet Demobilisation, 1945-1947 CONSOLIDATION PAGE 30 2.1 American Military Preparedness Stabilises, Early 1948 2.2 Summer of 1948-Early 1949: The Truman Administration Chooses to Continue Its Reliance on Nuclear Weapons 2.3 The Creation of the Western Union and the Signing of the North Atlantic Treaty: Their Impact on Western Military Power 2.4 The Fiscal 1950 American Defence Budget 2.5 The Truman Administration's Perceptions of Soviet Military Capabilities, 1948-1950 2.6 The Accuracy of the Truman Administration's Perceptions of Soviet Military Capabilities RECONSIDERATION PAGE 117 3.1 The Beginning of the Acheson-Johnson Conflict Over ArmsPolicy 3.2 George Kennan's Opposition to an Arms Build-Up 3.3 The Soviet Atomic Bomb and the American Hydrogen Bomb 3.4 The Writing of NSC-68 3.5 The Truman Administration's Reaction to NSC-68 3.6 Work on the Fiscal 1951 and Fiscal 1952 Defence Budgets Before the Korean War 3.7 Traitors, Spy Hunts, and the Growing Dissension, Early 1950 3.8 The Return of the Old Guard iv TRANSFORMATION PAGE 208 4.1 The Truman Administration's Decision to Enter the Korean War 4.2 The Truman Administration's Decision to Begin an Arms Build- Up 4.3 The Primacy of the Arms Build-Up in the Truman Administration's Foreign Policy 4.4 Expansion of the Fiscal 1951 Defence Budget After the Start of the Korean War 4.5 The Fiscal 1952 American Defence Budget GLOBALISATION PAGE 263 5.1 American Deployment to Europe and the Promise of German Rearmament 5.2 The War Scare and the Domestic Attacks on Truman's Policy 5.3 The "Great Debate" 5.4 The Birth of American Global Power 5.5 The Soviet Union Initiates an Arms Build-Up, 1950-1951 THE BUILD-UP: WHAT & HOW PAGE 315 6.1 Financing the American Arms Build-Up 6.2 The Arms Build-Up and the Economy 6.3 Civil Defence and Other Forms of Preparation for a Major War 6.4 The American Arms Build-Up: What New Conventional Forces Did It Buy? 6.5 The Expansion of the American Nuclear Arsenal and Delivery Systems 6.6 1953-1954: Truman Leaves Office and American Military Spending Stabilises at a High Level 6.7 1953-1954: Stalin Dies, and Soviet Military Spending Continues to Rise CONCLUSION PAGE 378 ABBREVIATIONS USED IN FOOTNOTES US Army Center of Military History ACMH Basil Liddell Hart Centre BLHC Central Intelligence Agency, Historical Office CIAH Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library DDEL Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library FDRL Foreign Relations of the United States FRUS Harry S. Truman Presidential Library HSTL US National Archives and Record Administration NARA Office of the Secretary of Defense, History Office OSDH Public Record Office of the United Kingdom PRO 1 PREFACE The dilemmas posed in understanding the US arms build-up of 1950-51 are those pertaining to most modem American diplomatic history. Like any history, this one has been written by, so to speak, standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before, and it is, therefore, necessary to briefly explain its relation to the existing texts. This dissertation attempts to balance an emphasis on domestic factors, primarily the ideology, interests, and political culture of the American elites, with an emphasis on the interplay of nation states.1 1.for a discussion on means of analysing sources of American foreign policy, see Michael Hogan, "Corporatism", The Journal of American History (June 1990); for explanations of the ongoing revisionist- postrevisionist debates, see Bruce Cumings, "'Revising Postrevisionism1, Or, The Poverty of Theory in Diplomatic History", and Melvyn Leffler, "New Approaches, Old Interpretations, and Prospective Reconfigurations", both in America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations Since 1941, edited by Michael Hogan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); on ideology see Michael Hunt, This appears, superficially, as a problem of "who" plays the most vital role, but, for the arms build-up, it is also a question of "when", and "why". An emphasis on elites, and their world views, tends to lead historians to emphasise the role of the bureaucracy and of ideology, at the expense of the heads of state and of the impact of world affairs. For the arms build-up, this means that many recent historical works have highlighted the role of the bureaucracy in creating the document NSC-68, and have spent much effort examining the manner in which the views inherent in NSC-68 came to be adopted by their advocates. The State Department and Defense Department elites are "who" caused the arms build-up, the spring of 1950, during which NSC-68 was written, is "when" the arms build-up policy was adopted, and the question of "why" the arms build-up was adopted can be answered through an investigation of the political culture, the spectrum through which American elites viewed the Soviet Union. These works have added breadth to the understanding of the event, and (fias^elped to better place the arms build-up within the context of the rest of American history and culture. However, while making use of these works, this dissertation also tries to use archival evidence and selected historical works to readjust the balance between the role of ideology and personality, between internal and external affairs, and between the importance of the lens Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987) through which perceptions are viewed, and the object which is being observed. In so doing, the dissertation attempts to present a fuller view of the process by which the arms build-up occurred. In this view, Truman plays a vital role in the question of "who" authorised the arms build-up. The start of the Korean War is the most critical of the many events (including the explosion of the Soviet atomic weapon, the victory of the Chinese Communist Party, the beginnings of the anti-Communist witch hunts in America, the signing of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Treaty, and the submission of NSC-68) that led to the arms build-up, and provides the most useful answer to the question of "when" it began. The existence of a Soviet preponderance of conventional power in Europe, and of a Soviet leadership willing to acquiesce in its ally's use of force, are much more important factors in "why" the arms build-up occurred. In addition to the crucial issues of who, when, and why, this dissertation also attempts, albeit briefly, to relate some of the consequences of the arms build-up. This includes changes in military strategy, such as the decision to resuscitate the Army, which had been subordinate to the Air Force's Strategic Air Corps in spending priorities, and the related decision to deploy American combat forces to Germany. The economic consequences for the United States of the arms build-up are also briefly examined. Structurally, this dissertation is designed to place the arms build-up in its international and domestic contexts. Since the primary reason the Truman administration expanded the US military in 1950-1951 was the perception of a Soviet preponderance of conventional power in Europe, the dissertation will attempt to explain the reasons that the Truman administration believed this. The first two chapters are devoted to this task; chapter one comparing the disarmament of the United States and its European allies after the Second World War with post-war Soviet military policy, and chapter two comparing the existing forces in 1948, and critiquing the Truman administration's evaluations of Soviet power.