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America's Post World War Containment Policy directed at Soviet Expansionism was fathered by George Kennan return to Post World War II society - The Baby Boomers or Free College Level Course in American History from Dick's Guides or Welcome to Dick's Guides Politicians after the war had a problem. Without a war could they take in as
much tax money and remain powerful? Truman knew the new enemy would be Russia. George Kennan devised and wrote the Containment Policy that led to the Truman Doctrine, the Korean War and the Vietnam war, as well as the Cold War. Dean Acheson was undersecretary of state, alarmed at Russian moves in Greece he said, "corruption .. (of Greece ... might eventually) infect ... Asia Minor and Egypt (and) Italy and France." George was a Foreign Service officer in Moscow who "greatly influenced official attitudes toward the Soviets. It was Kennan who turned official heads when he asserted that the nation's approach to the Soviet Union "must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies." Thus was born the nation's "containment" policy in Europe, aimed at Soviet expansionism." (Source: A Grand Delusion). Later, America's politicians, on their own, extended this policy to containing communism every where, including Asia and -- in particular -- Korea. The period of the containment policy never really ended, until Ronald Regan's prsidency. Regan went back to the days right after World War II and followed the advice of Churchill who had said the one thing the Russians respected was military power. Regan made the US military power so great that the Soviet Union broke apart, trying to keep up with America's military spending. Regan's leadership and Churchill's wisdom proved too much for the soviets and made the sophisticated American politicians look silly with their "containment policies" and "gradual expansion" of wars. In early 1947 the United States had managed to get into direct intellectual conflict with the Soviets' willingness to use force. Great Britain told President Truman that it could no longer afford to keep the commies in their place in Greece and Turkey in the wake of a budget crisis. The smell of more tax money was in the air. Politically appointed U.S. diplomats "sent word that the British withdrawal would almost certainly mean the collapse of the Greek government. The message was clear: if the government fell, it would fall in the lap of a totalitarian government with close ties to" the commies. The Commies were coming! The Commies were coming! Truman quickly seized the opportunity to raise more money from American taxpayers. He "demanded that Congress appropriate $400 million in aid to prop up the governments of Greece and Turkey." Politicians who opposed him were labeled "isolationists". But, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, a former political isolationist himself, ... urged the president to present the threat of Soviet expansionism to Congress and the nation in the starkest of terms. The only way to get the aid, Vandenberg advised, was to "make a personal appearance before Congress and scare the hell out of the American people." On March 12, 1947, Truman, told the American people "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures." The Commies are coming but we're going to get them before they get here. Trust me. I'm a politician. The public was convinced. Every one found communists hiding under their beds, ready to take over the good old USA. Week kneed, unprincipaled politicians all fell in line and chanted, "the commies are coming," or other similar phrases. A forty-five-year inept worldwide crusade against communism had begun. Rather than building military might to confront the communists, an official American policy began -- one of rationale intervention on behalf of some nations threatened by communism. This approach was so silly that, by the time of the persidencies of Nixon, Regan and George Bush the elder, some Democrat politicians no longer wanted to contain communism, even when it occurred in North America. But, back in 1947, the politicians used the public's concern about the Soviets' atomic test, as well as in 1949 when Mao Tse-tung's commie forces won Chin, to raise taxes and spread the money around to their supporters. Truman and his State Department knew ... the president could have turned the tide in China's civil war ... (with) ... massive military intervention. But, that did not feel right to the intellectual politicians of America's self-perpetuating two party system. To protect the willingness of America's politicians to surrender to China, Secretary of State DEan Acheson told Americans, "There is no evidence that the furnishing of additional military materiel would alter the pattern of current developments in China." Time publisher Henry Luce, who knew something about China, and had grown up there, wrote, "At no time in the long chronicle of its failure [in China] had [Truman's administration] displayed a modest fraction of the stamina and decisiveness which had checked communism in Europe." New Jersey Republican H. Alexander Smith added that Truman and his political pals had, "left the back door wide open in Asia." William Knowland, a California politician said the "debacle (in China) solely and exclusively rests upon the administration which initiated and tolerated it." Using the words in the Democrat's Alien Registration Act, Knowland went on to accuse Truman and his political pals of "aiding, abetting and giving support to the spread of communism in Asia." The fall of China was a call to arms for the conservative Republicans. Frustrated by their inability to regain the White House after seventeen years in political exile, they sensed the makings of a potent campaign issue. Chiang's Nationalist government, they alleged, did not fall because of economic and political forces beyond the control of U.S. policymakers; liberal Democratic foreign policy experts, sympathetic to communism, had "lost" China and thereby jeopardized U.S. national security. The Containment policy had been somewhat effective in some parts of Europe (Western Europe). It was totally ineffectual in Eastern Europe and Asia, led to the loss of China to those hated commies, got American service people killed in Korea and Vietnam, and proved that "containment policies," "gradually escalating wars," and "rational interventions" were nifty phrases that pleased the intellectuals, helped politicians increase taxes, but never solved the problem of dealing with Communism's naked aggression. The liberal New Republic was so taken back by the failure of intellectual approaches, like the containment policy, that it felt the need to mount a defense against those who recognized the stupidity of poorly thought out wishy-washy policies. It wrote, "This is the year, when the feverish fear of Communism is fanned higher by elections; when the men who legislate our futures think less of a hundred million votes in Asia than of a thousand votes in the Fourth Ward; when any gesture of conciliation to end the cold war is smeared as a surrender by an opposition whose dearest ambition is to pin the communist label on our chief of state." But the demagoguery of the media increased. Some conservative Democrats, aware of their constituents' alarm over the communist victories, were accused of "fanning the flames of fear." Even John Kennedy, then a House Representative was forced to admit "What our young men had saved, our diplomats and our president frittered away." Sounding like a pre-Regan Regan -- or a post war Churchill he admitted America must "prepare ourselves vigorously." Unfortunately Kennedy showed that he liked wishy-washy policies too, and added the policies he wanted would only "hold the line in the rest of Asia."
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