The General vs. the President

by H. W. Brands

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  TRUMAN HAD GROWN accustomed to being slandered by Republicans and other political opponents, but McCarthy, in so baldly alleging collusion with communism, crossed the line. The president responded with outrage. “This is the first time in my experience, and I was ten years in the Senate, that I ever heard of a senator trying to discredit his own government before the world,” he wrote. “You know that isn’t done by honest public officials. Your telegram is not only not true and an insolent approach to a situation that should have been worked out between man and man, but it shows conclusively that you are not even fit to have a hand in the operation of the government of the United States. I am very sure that the people of Wisconsin are extremely sorry that they are represented by a person who has as little sense of responsibility as you have.”

  Truman didn’t mail this letter, though. He often vented in drafts and set his words aside until he cooled off. In this case he realized he would simply be playing into McCarthy’s hands. The senator would surely share the response with the press; he might even read it aloud to the Senate. Truman didn’t propose to give the Republican lowlife any more material than he was making up on his own.

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  FOR THE MOMENT McCarthy was a minor irritant; Truman’s larger problem was the storm of criticism evoked by the communist victory in China. Congressional Republicans included a powerful bloc whose members revered Chiang Kai-shek and demanded his restoration as the leader of all of China. Robert Taft had contested Dewey for the Republican nomination in 1948 and was judged the front-runner for 1952; the Ohio senator now excoriated the Truman administration for having abandoned Chiang. “There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that the proper kind of sincere aid to Nationalist China a few years ago could have stopped communism in China,” Taft declared. Dean Acheson and his cabal at the State Department were especially to blame. “The State Department has been guided by a left-wing group who obviously have wanted to get rid of Chiang and were willing at least to turn China over to the Communists for that purpose.”

  The Republicans insisted that Congress investigate the sordid affair, and such was the uproar in the country that the majority Democrats felt obliged to go along. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee called Louis Johnson, the secretary of defense, and Omar Bradley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Republican members of the committee sought to reveal a rift between the diplomats of the State Department and the military men of the Defense Department on the importance of Formosa. They didn’t get far. Chairman Tom Connally of Texas kept reporters out of the session, but he briefed them after it ended. Johnson and Bradley had said that Formosa should not be allowed to fall to the communists but that it didn’t warrant occupation by U.S. troops, Connally related. He continued: “Secretary Johnson also strongly pointed out that there has been no rift between the Department of Defense and the Department of State with respect to our basic policy and objectives in that area.”

  The Republicans on the committee, unsatisfied, demanded to hear from Douglas MacArthur. General MacArthur was the American commander with greatest experience of the Far East and the one with present responsibility for the region. He must give his views.

  Connally disagreed and declined to summon the general. Bringing Johnson and Bradley across the Potomac to Capitol Hill was one thing, he said; bringing MacArthur across the Pacific and North America was quite another. Besides, MacArthur didn’t want to leave Japan. “General MacArthur several times has refused to come to the United States,” Connally observed. “Shall we send the sheriff for him?”

  MacArthur wound up testifying indirectly. One of the Republicans on the committee shared with reporters MacArthur’s thinking, as explained by Bradley. “General Bradley said MacArthur’s views had been fully taken into consideration. The views of MacArthur and the Joint Chiefs of Staff seem in fact to be pretty much the same about Formosa, except that MacArthur attaches more urgency to the situation. MacArthur and the Joint Chiefs agree that Formosa in hostile hands would be a menace to our lifeline.”

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  MACARTHUR INDEED BELIEVED that a hostile Formosa would be a menace. He judged the administration’s treatment of Chiang disgraceful and destructive. “The decision to withdraw previously pledged American support was one of the greatest mistakes ever made in our history,” he later wrote. “At one fell blow, everything that had been so laboriously built up since the days of John Hay”—the author of America’s first conscious policy toward China, in the 1890s—“was lost.” With the Republican conservatives, MacArthur laid the blame at the feet of Dean Acheson. “In an address before the National Press Club in Washington, Secretary of State Acheson declared Formosa outside ‘our defense perimeter.’ ” MacArthur tried to remedy this woeful mistake. “I felt that the Secretary of State was badly advised about the Far East, and I invited him to be my guest in Tokyo. I had never met Dean Acheson, but felt certain that his own survey of the Asiatic situation would materially alter his expressed views.” Acheson refused to be educated, MacArthur recounted. “He declined the invitation, saying that the pressure of his duties prevented him from leaving Washington. He did, however, visit Europe eleven times during his stay in office.”

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  MACARTHUR’S FAR EASTERN command initially included China’s neighbor Korea. His subordinate General John Hodge had led a landing of American forces at Inchon in September 1945 that shortly encountered Russian troops who had entered the northern part of the country upon Moscow’s eleventh-hour declaration of war against Japan. The American and Soviet governments agreed to divide the country at the 38th parallel to facilitate the surrender of Japanese forces. The Americans would occupy the region south of the parallel, the Russians the region north. The division was a matter of convenience, with both sides assuming that a high-level peace conference would determine the fate of Korea along with the other issues outstanding from the war.

  But the conference never took place, and the temporary division of Korea congealed into permanence. North of the 38th parallel Kim Il Sung imposed communist rule; south of the parallel Syngman Rhee established an anticommunist yet hardly less authoritarian regime. The United Nations General Assembly approved resolutions endorsing Korean unity, but nothing was done to implement them. Few people outside the country paid it much attention.

  MacArthur visited Seoul in the summer of 1948 to congratulate Rhee on his assuming the presidency of the Republic of Korea, yet when the Soviets announced in early 1949 that they had evacuated their troops from North Korea, MacArthur recommended the removal of U.S. troops from the South. They were gone by the end of June, at which point MacArthur’s responsibility for Korea ceased.

  Consequently Dean Acheson’s omission of Korea from America’s defense perimeter, in the January 1950 National Press Club speech MacArthur cited, occasioned much less notice than his exemption of Formosa. Since the early twentieth century the National Press Club had provided a place for reporters to drink, smoke and compare notes; since the 1930s it had hosted a series of luncheons at which newsmakers broke bread with news writers and sometimes broke stories. The luncheons allowed officials like Acheson to explain policies in fuller detail and with greater nuance than they often could elsewhere, and to do so before an audience that was well informed, attentive and professionally unpartisan. Speakers’ remarks were typically not recorded, encouraging the open dialogue the club members valued. Attendance at the luncheons varied; mayors drew smaller crowds than prime ministers. The Acheson lunch was a hot ticket on account of the heat Acheson and the Truman administration were feeling over China. The room was packed, and the secretary of state was given ample opportunity to defend and elucidate the administration’s position.

  Acheson traced the evolution of American policy toward China in general and toward Chiang in particular. “After the war Chiang Kai-shek emerged as the undisputed leader of the Chinese people,” Acheson said. “Only one faction, the Communists, up in the hills, ill-equipped, ragged, a very small m
ilitary force, was determinedly opposed to his position. He had overwhelming military power, greater military power than any ruler had ever had in the entire history of China. He had tremendous economic and military support and backing from the United States. He had the acceptance of all other foreign countries.” And yet he had squandered those advantages, losing the support of the Chinese people through corruption and misgovernment. “What has happened, in my judgment, is that the almost inexhaustible patience of the Chinese people in their misery ended. They did not bother to overthrow this government. There was really nothing to overthrow. They simply ignored it throughout the country.” No amount of American aid could have changed things.

  Acheson went on to describe the defensive perimeter of the United States in the western Pacific region. It ran along the island chain that stretched from the Aleutians of Alaska south and west through Japan and the Ryukyu Islands to the Philippines. Acheson indeed omitted mention of Formosa, though many strategists considered it a crucial part of the island chain. Korea was omitted too, being part of the mainland rather than the island chain. Regarding the areas he did not include in America’s defensive zone, Acheson said, “It must be clear that no person can guarantee these areas against military attack. But it must also be clear that such a guarantee is hardly sensible or necessary within the realm of practical relationship. Should such an attack occur—one hesitates to say where such an armed attack could come from—an initial reliance must be on the people attacked to resist it and then upon the commitments of the entire civilized world under the charter of the United Nations, which so far has not proved a weak reed to lean on by people who are determined to protect their independence against outside aggression.”

  The Republicans who pounced on Acheson for omitting Formosa said next to nothing about Korea. China was the obsession of the congressional Republicans, aided by such conservative media stalwarts as Time magazine’s chief, Henry Luce, who had been born in China to American missionary parents; Korea was the obsession of no one in America. Truman and Acheson were roundly condemned for losing China; their concession of half of Korea elicited yawns and even, in some quarters, approval for not risking a land war in Asia. Korea was considered so unimportant that just days after Acheson’s speech the House rejected the administration’s request for continued aid to that country.

  Nor was the South Korean government upset by Acheson’s remarks. Quite the contrary. A memo of a meeting between Truman and South Korean ambassador John Myun Chang summarized: “The Ambassador expressed the appreciation of President Rhee and the National Assembly for the Secretary’s remarks regarding Korea at the Press Club and the Secretary’s letter of January 20 to President Truman.” In the Press Club speech Acheson had supported U.S. aid to Korea, and the January 20 letter was a warning that the rejection of aid augured damage to American policy not only toward Korea but toward other parts of the world. The letter expressed a determination to get the House to reconsider. The House did so after the administration pared down the money for Korea and linked it to new aid to Chiang Kai-shek.

  In Tokyo Douglas MacArthur was silent about Acheson’s omission of Korea. If the general even noticed it, he kept his thoughts to himself. Like Congress, he worried far more about China and Formosa.

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  OBSERVERS OF HARRY Truman often wondered what he saw in Dean Acheson. The two men could hardly have been more dissimilar. Acheson’s elegantly credentialed education—Groton, Yale, Harvard Law—contrasted starkly with the autodidactic version of Truman, whose classroom experience ended when he exited high school. Acheson oozed arrogance Truman abided in no one else. Acheson suffered fools, meaning most of those who disagreed with him, hardly at all. Truman took care with his clothing and appearance but never looked more than Main Street natty; Acheson adopted the fashions and style of Savile Row. Truman gazed out frankly on the world through plain, rimless glasses; Acheson’s eyebrow was perpetually arched. Long past the time when public figures in America had abandoned facial hair, Acheson’s thin mustache accentuated the curl of his lip as he sneered at his critics. Harry Truman was a man of the ordinary people of America; Dean Acheson was everything ordinary Americans loved to hate.

  Even Acheson’s friends thought so. Oliver Franks served as British ambassador to the United States and came to know Acheson quite well. Franks was struck at once by the contrast between Truman and Acheson. “President Truman is a rather simple and uncomplicated man,” Franks said. “Acheson is considerably different. He combines an eighteenth century style of personal taste with the moral conscience and austerity of a seventeenth century Puritan. I don’t mean that he doesn’t drink and enjoy good living, but his life is austere.” Franks continued, “Two qualities are at war in Acheson. The historical sense which he shares with Truman, and the lawyer’s skill at creating the case which he must argue. His sheer lucidness could be overwhelming and could take him out of the context in which he was arguing. Acheson also takes pride in doing hard, pioneering things. He never allows himself to forget the New England roots out of which it is all done.” Acheson had reasonably good relations with a few senators and representatives who shared his seriousness of purpose. “Like himself, they were gentlemen,” Franks said. “They had a code.” But for the majority of legislators, Acheson felt nothing but disdain. “Acheson is incapable of entertaining intellectual shoddiness with patience. He lacks the indispensable political gift—for a long run political career—of believing that every argument has an equally legitimate intellectual background. That gift just wasn’t given to Acheson. He could not tolerate entertaining trivial ideas or reasoning, however well meant, as worthy of respect. And when he chose to say what he was thinking, the words wounded and were neither forgotten nor forgiven. His unwillingness to show deference to every piece of nonsense a senator or congressman chose to utter was complete.”

  Acheson convicted himself out of his own mouth, once he was beyond the reach of politics. In retirement he expressed grave reservations about the fundamental principles of democracy. “You all start with the premise that democracy is some good,” he told two visitors who were asking why democracies had difficulty conducting effective foreign policy. “I don’t think it’s worth a damn. I think Churchill is right, the only thing to be said for democracy is that there is nothing else that’s any better, and therefore he used to say, ‘Tyranny tempered by assassination, but lots of assassination.’ People say, ‘If the Congress were more representative of the people it would be better.’ I say the Congress is too damn representative. It’s just as stupid as the people are, just as uneducated, just as dumb, just as selfish.”

  Acheson conceded occasional exceptions. “Vandenberg is a typical example of somebody who got educated,” he said of Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan. “Very largely, Cordell Hull”—Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of state—“did this. He took a fellow from Grand Rapids, who was a perfect editor of the Grand Rapids newspaper. He didn’t look any further than furniture”—the chief industry of Grand Rapids—“not a bit. And Hull began to tell him about the world. What you had to do to get certain results. And Van was sort of open-mouthed at this. He said, ‘My God!’ It was sort of like having Marco Polo come home and talk with you. ‘I’ll be damned. You really mean it’s like that?’ ‘Yes, it really is.’ And he said, ‘Well, God, then we’re going to do something about it.’ Then he became a fellow who had ideas but never strolled far off first base.”

  Robert Taft was a harder type. “Bob was very educated on certain things,” Acheson said of the Ohio senator. “Public housing he knew a lot about and was for, and was radical as hell on that; but so far as them foreigners out there are concerned, to hell with them, they didn’t vote in Ohio and they were not good, and shiftless. Get a good Army, Navy and Air Force, and to hell with it.”

  While he served as secretary of state, Acheson held his tongue on the deficiencies of democracy, but his arrogance still showed. And it provoked the Republicans beyond endurance. “I
look at that fellow,” Nebraska senator Hugh Butler declared. “I watch his smart aleck manner and his British clothes and that New Dealism, everlasting New Dealism in everything he says and does, and I want to shout, Get out! Get out! You stand for everything that has been wrong with the United States for years.”

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  AGAINST ALL ODDS, Acheson and Truman got along splendidly. They had spoken, by chance, just days before Franklin Roosevelt’s death. “I had a long meeting with Mr. Truman and for the first time got a definite impression,” Acheson wrote to his son. “It was a very good impression. He is straight-forward, decisive, simple, entirely honest.” Acheson didn’t have to add, to his son, that these traits were just the opposite of Roosevelt’s, which was why Acheson and other officials of the State Department had found Roosevelt so difficult to deal with. Truman promised to be a subordinate’s dream. “He, of course, has the limitations upon his judgment and wisdom that the limitations of his experience produce, but I think he will learn fast and will inspire confidence.”

  Acheson took pains to make himself Truman’s tutor. An assistant secretary of state when Truman became president, Acheson remained a deputy during Truman’s first term. But his bosses—Secretaries of State Edward Stettinius, James Byrnes and George Marshall—were, respectively, inexperienced, distracted and often ailing, allowing Acheson great leeway to shape American policy. He and Truman saw eye to eye on the need for firmness toward the Soviet Union, and a mutual admiration developed between the two men. When Marshall retired following Truman’s 1948 election victory, Acheson was the obvious successor.