by David Milne
The design … calls for the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society in the countries of the non-Soviet world and their replacement by an apparatus and structure subservient to and controlled from the Kremlin. To that end Soviet efforts are now directed toward the domination of the Eurasian land mass. The United States, as the principal center of power in the non-Soviet world and the bulwark of opposition to Soviet expansion, is the principal enemy whose integrity and vitality must be subverted or destroyed by one means or another if the Kremlin is to achieve its fundamental design.37
A very different manner of expression had entered the American diplomatic lexicon.
Interpretative certainty conveyed in searing language courses through NSC-68’s seventy-one pages. The following sentences provide a good example: “The implacable purpose of the slave state to eliminate the challenge of freedom has placed the two great powers at opposite poles. It is this fact which gives the present polarization of power the quality of crisis.” The violence of the language was designed to carve out latitude in implementing a response. Defeating the designs of a “slave state,” the ultimate purpose of which is to eliminate “freedom,” justifies recourse to just about anything in whatever location the threat arises. And this is what Nitze demanded. Kennan’s Long Telegram and X Article were imprecise in delineating the full range of vital American interests. There is no such ambiguity in NSC-68. The document identifies and confronts a major problem: that Marxism-Leninism holds the greatest appeal to underdeveloped nations emerging from colonial rule, hostile to a “West” synonymous not with progress and freedom but with exploitation:
The ideological pretensions of the Kremlin are another great source of strength … They have found a particularly receptive audience in Asia, especially as the Asiatics have been impressed by what has been plausibly portrayed to them as the rapid advance of the USSR from a backward society to a position of great world power … The Kremlin cynically identifies itself with the genuine aspirations of large numbers of people, and places itself at the head of an international crusade with all of the benefits which derive therefrom.
To remedy this situation, Nitze advocated greater “assistance in economic development,” but that on its own is insufficient. “The assault on free institutions is world-wide now,” he wrote, “and in the context of the present polarization of power a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere.” The Cold War had been truly transformed into a zero-sum game, in which few Soviet provocations—real or perceived—could be ignored. Here was a doctrine of considerable force. In combating a broad-front Soviet assault, NSC-68 cautions against letting anything slip:
The shadow of Soviet force falls darkly on Western Europe and Asia and supports a policy of encroachment. The free world lacks adequate means—in the form of forces in being—to thwart such expansion locally. The United States will therefore be confronted more frequently with the dilemma of reacting totally to a limited extension of Soviet control or of not reacting at all … Continuation of present trends is likely to lead, therefore, to a gradual withdrawal under the direct or indirect pressure of the Soviet Union, until we discover one day that we have sacrificed positions of vital interest. In other words, the United States would have chosen, by lack of the necessary decisions and actions, to fall back to isolation in the Western Hemisphere.
This dilemma can be rephrased as an old adage: give an inch and Moscow will take a mile. NSC-68 calls for the creation of a flexible U.S. capability to respond to all manner of provocation at all geographical points. American credibility was at stake everywhere, for ignoring transgressions would invite subsequent aggression on a larger scale. All citizens needed to realize that “the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world is at stake.”
Despite its militant language, NSC-68 did not countenance waging a premeditated war against the Soviet Union—America reserved the right to respond symmetrically or asymmetrically depending on circumstances. “It goes without saying,” Nitze clarified, “that the idea of ‘preventive’ war—in the sense of a military attack not provoked by a military attack upon us or our allies—is generally unacceptable to Americans … Although the American people would probably rally in support of the war effort, the shock of responsibility for a surprise attack would be morally corrosive.” Instead NSC-68 called for a “more rapid build-up of political, economic, and military strength,” to a point of sufficiency where the United States had “the military power to deter, if possible, Soviet expansion, and to defeat, if necessary, aggressive Soviet or Soviet-directed actions of a limited or total character.”
Defensive capabilities of this sort were not likely to come cheap, and Nitze, before submitting the report, asked Acheson for advice on whether to include a realistic cost estimate. “Paul,” Acheson said, “don’t put any such figure into this report … One first ought to decide whether this is the kind of policy one wants to follow. The extent to which one actually implements it with appropriations is a separate question which involves the domestic economy and other considerations. So don’t get into that hassle at this stage.”38 Acheson later commented that the purpose of NSC-68 was to “bludgeon the mass mind of government.”39 Nitze wielded the bludgeon, certainly, but Acheson was wise to counsel against revealing the true cost of waging the global Cold War. The actual cost was arguably more frightening than the presentation of an expansionist Soviet slave state. The U.S. defense budget quadrupled from 1950 to 1951: from $13.5 billion to $48.2 billion.40 In some ways Nitze was following Alfred Mahan in emphasizing the need for greater military preparedness. But Mahan made his case when the United States was a second-tier military power; Nitze did so when the United States was utterly dominant at sea and in possession of the world’s most advanced weaponry. NSC-68 truly created what Dwight Eisenhower would later identify with concern as the “military-industrial complex.”
Senator Arthur Vandenberg had told Truman and Acheson that they would “have to scare hell out of the American people” to secure the necessary support for the containment strategy.41 NSC-68 was written for a supposedly less credulous and twitchy audience: the government and bureaucracy. But it scared people all the same. Nitze submitted the report to President Truman on April 7, 1950, who passed a copy to his chief domestic adviser, Charles Murphy, for his assessment. Murphy took the report home, read it, and was so shaken by Nitze’s diagnosis of Soviet intentions that he took the following day off work, reading key passages again and again, worrying about the war that was all but certain to visit the world.42
Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson was less impressed. A thrifty man, Johnson immediately understood that the document’s planning prescriptions, though unspecified in cost terms, would require a fundamental restructuring of the American economy. At a March 22 meeting called to discuss the report, Johnson stormed in, accused Nitze of hatching a “conspiracy” designed to undermine his efforts to control the budget, and stormed out again. News of the meeting spread throughout the Truman administration, generating sympathy for Nitze—a rare occurrence—and scorn for Johnson’s supposedly intemperate stance. A few weeks later, while Johnson was in Europe on NATO business, the report made its way to the president. Nitze recalled that Johnson “made kind of an ass of himself.”43 The secretary of defense had also lost control of the planning process and, with it, the budget.
George Kennan took a predictably dim view of NSC-68: “With the preparation of NSC-68 I had nothing to do. I was disgusted about the assumptions concerning Soviet intentions.”44 It was histrionic, adjective laden, belligerent, and informed by insights from the social sciences, and contained an explicit rebuttal of his containment doctrine. It had taken just weeks for Nitze to jettison Kennan’s cautious and carefully calibrated diplomatic legacy. Chip Bohlen joined Kennan’s side in decrying the manner in which the report “gave too much emphasis to Soviet ambitions for expansion.” Acheson stepped in to arbitrate the dispute but
found Bohlen’s critique unpersuasive. The language stood; all that remained was a presidential signature.
But this was no formality. Truman sympathized with Louis Johnson in his desire to limit American defense spending and balance the books. The president placed NSC-68 in a holding pattern, concerned that Nitze’s grand strategic vision might derail his domestic agenda and his party’s political prospects. Chances for presidential approval appeared slim until a conflict intervened that vested the report with decisive momentum. When North Korea invaded South Korea, Nitze’s supposedly alarmist portrayal suddenly appeared accurate and measured.
* * *
At the close of the Second World War, Korea had been divided at the 38th parallel, with a Soviet occupation zone to the north and an American one to the south. The fiercely doctrinaire communist Kim Il-Sung ruled northern Korea in the manner of Josef Stalin. In the south, the corrupt, conservative Syngman Rhee wielded power. Rhee had studied for his doctorate at Princeton with Woodrow Wilson, was strongly pro-Western in political and economic preferences, Christian in spiritual matters, and as determined as Kim to reunify the nation on his own terms. The United States was unwilling to sanction or support Rhee’s desire to launch a preemptive strike north of the 38th parallel. But Kim was more fortunate—if that is the word—in his superpower patron. Having been pestered for months with requests for support, Stalin reluctantly agreed to support Kim’s invasion plans in April 1950, warning his zealous young comrade that “if you get kicked in the teeth, I shall not lift a finger.”45 Stalin’s qualified consent was more than enough encouragement for Kim. On June 25, a hundred thousand North Korean troops poured across the 38th parallel, forcing the enemy into full-scale retreat.46 The shock felt in Washington was palpable. Nitze’s NSC-68 began to look as farsighted in 1950 as Kennan’s Long Telegram had appeared in 1946.
The speed and purpose of America’s reaction startled Stalin, whose support for Kim presupposed that the Western response would be limited to nonmilitary channels. Instead, Truman came out fighting to a degree that surprised even Nitze, who described his president as “a very feisty fellow [who] was prepared to fight anybody and everybody as long as he was convinced he was right.” And so it was with the Korean War. The president took advantage of the Soviet Union’s absence from the United Nations Security Council to secure UN approval for military action to repulse the northern offensive. Within days, the United States had committed itself to liberate South Korea. And as NSC-68 had recommended, America’s range of strategic interests widened considerably. The Seventh Fleet was deployed to the Taiwan Strait. The Truman administration increased its financial support for the French effort to put down a communist insurgency in Indochina. Hard realities compelled Truman to conclude that his fiscal caution had been misplaced, that NSC-68 was correct in identifying Marxism-Leninism as expansionary and insatiable. Nitze recalled that “when the attack took place, [Truman] felt that really did settle the matter in his mind. He came to the conclusion that what NSC-68 basically said … was true.”47 Containment had truly shed its European focus.
Nitze’s and Kennan’s responses to the war were in fact identical. Both shared a common belief that the United States should respond forcefully to this gross violation of the postwar status quo; this was a clear example of what NSC-68 identified as “piecemeal aggression.” Kennan was immediately summoned to Washington from rural Pennsylvania in an advisory capacity—the summoning process hindered by Kennan’s refusal to have a telephone installed at the farm. At a meeting in Dean Acheson’s office on June 26, Kennan “stated it as my deep conviction that the U.S. had no choice but to accept this challenge and to make it its purpose to see to it that South Korea was restored to the rule of the Republic of Korea. The question of what we should commit to this purpose was simply a question of what was required for the completion of the task.”48 Nitze was of a similar mind, though Kennan confided to his diary that he was worried about working with his successor, as “my whole framework of thought … was strange to Nitze, and … he would be apt to act on concepts of his own which would differ from those I had put forward.”49 Kennan need not have worried. NSC-68’s bluster and unwillingness to countenance opportunity costs was not to Kennan’s taste, but confronting a clear-cut case of communist aggression—an internationally recognized boundary was breached, after all—was a different matter.
In September 1950, United Nations troops, composed primarily of U.S. Marines, executed an audacious amphibious landing at Inchon on the northwestern part of the Korean Peninsula. General Douglas MacArthur devised the plan and led the assault, which ultimately enabled the UN forces to divide and scatter its enemy. After Inchon, first Seoul and then the remainder of South Korea were liberated in a matter of weeks. This major battlefield victory led MacArthur to pose the question of what to do next. The primary goal of restoring Korea’s 1945 boundary at the 38th parallel had been achieved. But building on this momentum to liberate North Korea from Kim Il-Sung was an enticing prospect for a man of MacArthur’s outsized ambitions, which included a likely run at the presidency in 1952. Truman was fully aware of MacArthur’s megalomania, describing him privately as “Mr. Prima Donna, Brass Hat, Five Star MacArthur.”50 Yet the president understood that MacArthur had momentum, and that liberating North Korea might quiet Republican attacks that he had “lost China” in 1949—when forces loyal to the communist Mao Zedong defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army, so ending the Chinese Civil War. MacArthur and Truman both discerned political advantage in removing a communist regime from the face of the earth.
During a debate in the State Department on the merits or otherwise of attempting to liberate North Korea, Nitze and Kennan collaborated on a paper that argued strongly against it. The gist of their opposition was that moving north might provoke Chinese intervention, which in turn would lead to a much larger and more dangerous conflict. John M. Allison, director of the Office of Northeast Asian Affairs at State, presented a strong case to the contrary, criticizing Nitze and Kennan for recommending “appeasement”—that dread word which summoned worst-case scenarios to conceal argumentative deficiencies—and the abdication of “moral principles.” Instead, Allison advised that MacArthur be permitted to lead his troops “right on up to the Manchurian and Siberian border,” a crushing hypothetical victory that would facilitate a “UN-supervised election for all of Korea.”51 Caught up in the fervor, Acheson, George Marshall—who had been recalled to replace Louis Johnson as secretary of defense—and Truman all decided to support the “sorcerer of Inchon,” as Acheson nicknamed MacArthur upon more sober reflection. On September 29, Marshall sent MacArthur a cable that read: “We want you to feel unhampered tactically and strategically to proceed north of the 38th parallel.”52
Kennan and Nitze called it correctly. As MacArthur edged northward, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops crossed their border to assume well-concealed defensive positions, hiding themselves in mine shafts and tunnels, not lighting fires that might alert their enemy, and preparing themselves to strike if MacArthur’s UN force came too far north. After testing the water with a series of minor skirmishes, on November 25, 1950, the People’s Volunteer Army launched a massive surprise attack that forced the advancing UN army into a swift and embarrassing retreat. By January 4, 1951, Chinese and North Korean troops had recaptured Seoul. China’s shock entry to the Korean War had forced the U.S. military into its longest retreat in history.
The UN force eventually recovered its poise and Seoul was recaptured. But General MacArthur again wanted to expand the war’s parameters, placing him on a collision course with Washington. In March 1951, Truman received word from the National Security Agency that MacArthur had been musing openly on launching a wider war against Red China to restore Chiang Kai-shek to power. Late that month, MacArthur supplied the Republican leader in the House of Representatives, Joseph William Martin Jr., with a speech criticizing Truman’s leadership, which Martin read out on the floor of the House. The concluding paragraph broug
ht to mind NSC-68’s stridency:
It seems strangely difficult for some to realize that here in Asia is where the Communist conspirators have elected to make their play for global conquest, and that we have joined the issue thus raised on the battlefield; that here we fight Europe’s war with arms while the diplomats there still fight it with words; that if we lose the war to communism in Asia the fall of Europe is inevitable; win it and Europe most probably would avoid war and yet preserve freedom. As you have pointed out, we must win. There is no substitute for victory.53
Nitze had authored, or at least superintended the drafting of, similar sentiments. Yet he was appalled by this rank insubordination. On April 10, he helped draft President Truman’s announcement that MacArthur was to be relieved of his command. MacArthur returned home to a ticker-tape parade in New York City, and Senator Joseph McCarthy was given yet more material for his campaign to purify the nation. Privately, McCarthy said of President Truman that the “son of a bitch ought to be impeached.” Publicly, McCarthy predicted during a speech in Milwaukee that MacArthur’s dismissal would produce a situation where “red waters may lap at all of our shores.” He further opined that “unless the public demands a halt in Operation Acheson, Asia, the Pacific, and Europe may be lost to communism.”54 After observing an enthusiastic audience applaud McCarthy’s histrionics in Milwaukee, his hometown, Kennan committed a long, mournful entry to his diary: