Exceptional (6 page)

IN NOVEMBER 1944, AS the Allied forces pushed through Europe toward Berlin, Eisenhower reminded all Americans that peace and freedom come at a price. “To get peace,” he said, “we have to
fight like hell.” And we did.

America had deployed the greatest military force the world has ever known to secure freedom and to defeat tyranny. We had transformed ourselves, in the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower, “from a situation of appalling danger
to unparalleled might in battle.” The
armed forces George C. Marshall built fought, as
Life
described it, “along supply lines extending 56,000 miles around 360 degrees of longitude, and from the Tropic of Capricorn
to the Arctic Sea.” We liberated millions and achieved the greatest victory in the history of mankind, for the good of all mankind. America—the exceptional nation—had become freedom's defender.

One of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today, on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east—to prevent their people from leaving.

—PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN, JUNE 8, 1982

S
hortly before 10
P.M.
on Tuesday, April 15, 1947, the motorcade passed under the sixteenth-century archways of the Kremlin. General George C. Marshall, architect of America's victory in World War II and the new American secretary of state, was in Moscow for meetings with his fellow foreign ministers to decide the postwar fate of Germany and Austria. Faced with economic devastation across Europe, Marshall felt a sense of urgency. He'd been in Moscow for more than a month and Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov had stonewalled and blocked all attempts at agreement.

Marshall was taking his case directly to Stalin. As Marshall explained the dire situation to the Soviet leader, Stalin sat at his desk and slowly doodled pictures of wolves
with a red pencil. When Marshall
finished, Stalin responded that he really didn't share Marshall's alarm. If things weren't resolved at this conference, he said, “We may agree the next time, or if not then,
the time after that.” The Soviet leader was in no rush to rescue the peoples of Europe from economic despair. He knew desperation would provide a fertile ground for the spread of communist ideology. Marshall realized that the belligerence Soviet foreign minister Molotov displayed at the conference sessions was not just a reflection of Molotov's personality.
It was Soviet policy.

On his flight back to the United States, Marshall contemplated Stalin's indifference to the crisis facing Europe. His advisor Charles Bohlen recalled:

[
Marshall
]
came to the conclusion that Stalin, looking over Europe, saw the best way to advance Soviet interests was to let matters drift. Economic conditions were bad. Europe was recovering slowly from the war. Little had been done to rebuild damaged highways, railroads, and canals. Business alliances severed by years of hostilities were still shattered. Unemployment was widespread. Millions of people were on short rations. There was a danger of epidemics. This was the kind of crisis that
Communism thrived on.

In an interview in 1956, Marshall said the Moscow meeting was a turning point for him. He had believed “the Soviets could be negotiated with,” he said, but “decided finally at Moscow, after the war, that
they could not be.” Another of Marshall's aides, Robert Murphy, put it this way: “It was the Moscow conference, I believe, that really rang down
the Iron Curtain.”

THERE HAD BEEN EARLIER signs of trouble. On February 9, 1946, Stalin delivered a speech at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, in the midst of what
Time
called “the biggest most
meaningless election
on earth.” No opposition candidates
were on the ballot. Stalin wound up with 100 percent of the
vote in Moscow.

In his Bolshoi speech, Stalin explained that communism and capitalism were incompatible. World War II, he claimed, was caused by capitalism and, in particular, by the unequal distribution of wealth this economic system generated. He asserted that future wars would be inevitable so long as the
capitalist system survived. It was,
Time
said, “the most warlike pronouncement uttered by any top-rank statesman
since V-J Day.”

In Washington, State Department official Paul Nitze
read the speech with care. “We interpreted it as being a delayed declaration of war against the United States,” he later explained. “There wasn't any doubt about it if you read the text carefully, what he was talking about.” A message was dispatched to George Kennan, the American chargé d'affaires in Moscow, asking for an analysis of Stalin's intentions and plans. Kennan sent his response in on February 22, 1946. Eight thousand words in length, the “Long Telegram” would lay the groundwork for an historic shift in American policy toward the Soviet Union.

The USSR, Kennan explained, was “a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent
modus vivendi
, that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be broken if Soviet power
is to be secure.” In other words, there could be no “permanent peaceful coexistence” between our two nations. This had nothing to do with any action taken by the United States, and there was nothing the United States could do to change the Soviet view of the situation. The United States should not expect concessions from the Soviets. What was needed was “a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counterforce at every point where they showed signs of encroaching upon the interest of a
peaceful and stable world.”

On February 21, 1947, the United States had to decide whether
it would put such a policy of “firm containment” into action. The first secretary at the British embassy in Washington delivered two diplomatic messages to Loy Henderson, director of the Office of Near Eastern Affairs at the U.S. State Department, notifying the United States that Britain would no longer be able to meet her obligations to provide assistance to Greece and Turkey. “The
messages were shockers,” said Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson. Aid to both countries would end in six weeks, on March 31, 1947.

Both nations were under threat from the Soviet Union. In Greece, a communist
insurrection was under way, generating economic chaos and the potential of imminent collapse. Turkey, under pressure from Moscow to provide access to the Mediterranean for the Soviet fleet, lacked the resources to simultaneously modernize its economy and maintain the military necessary to defend
against the Soviet threat. President Truman and his senior advisors quickly recognized that Greece and Turkey needed support to maintain their independence. Such assistance was something only America could provide—and it was vital for our security.

The following week, President Truman hosted a meeting of the congressional leadership to discuss possible U.S. aid to Greece and Turkey. Undersecretary of State Acheson described the situation America faced and explained what could happen if we failed to act:

Soviet pressure on the
[
Turkish
]
Straits, on Iran, and on northern Greece had brought the Balkans to the point where a highly possible Soviet breakthrough might open three continents to Soviet penetration. Like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the east. It would also carry infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe through Italy and France, already threatened
by the strongest domestic Communist parties in Western Europe. The Soviet Union was playing one of the greatest gambles in history at minimal cost. It did not need to win all the possibilities. Even one or two offered immense gains. We and we alone were in a position to
break up the play.

On Wednesday, March 12, 1947, President Truman appeared before a joint session of Congress to request $400 million in assistance for Greece and Turkey. Speaking from the ornate white marble rostrum, with the Speaker of the House and the president pro tem of the Senate seated behind him, Truman introduced what would become known as the Truman Doctrine. “At the present moment in world history,” he explained, “nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often
not a free one.” He then described the difference between the principles of freedom advocated by the United States, and the methods of oppression pursued by the Soviet Union:

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the
suppression of personal freedoms.

“I believe,” the president said, 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. I believe we must assist free peoples to work out their own
destinies in their own ways.”

Truman closed his remarks by explaining the link between economic devastation and the rise of communism:

The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive. 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 our own Nation.

Congress approved Truman's Greek-Turkish Aid Act by large
majorities in both houses. Truman signed it into law on May 22, 1947.

Secretary Marshall had returned from his meetings in Moscow seized with the importance of rebuilding Europe's shattered economies. He tapped George Kennan to lead a new Policy Planning Office in the Department of State and instructed him to prepare a report outlining how America could most effectively
assist the European recovery. Kennan delivered his report the day after President Truman signed the aid act. The Policy Planning staff advised, among other things, that the assistance should be based on a joint recovery plan prepared with direct involvement of the Europeans. It also suggested that the new assistance should not exclude the Soviets or Eastern Europe.

Marshall decided to use a speech during Harvard's commencement exercises to explain the necessity for America to act. He began by describing the devastation facing Europe and the damage that could be done, as a result, to America's economy. “It is logical,” he said, “that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.” Our assistance would be open to all in Europe who needed it, including the
Soviet Union and its allied states. “Our policy,” Marshall said, “is not directed against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.” The program he was proposing would, he said, “require a willingness on the part of our people to face up to the vast responsibility which history has clearly
placed upon our country.” Wanting to reaffirm how high the stakes were and how important it was for America to act, Marshall had added handwritten notes to the end of
his prepared remarks. He read them now, saying that he realized America was “remote from the scene of these troubles” and it was difficult perhaps to grasp the full scale of the suffering. And yet, he said, “The whole world of the future hangs on a proper judgment. It hangs, I think, to a large extent on the realization of the American people . . . of just what can best be done and what must be done.”

Marshall received a resounding ovation when he finished his
twelve-minute speech, but the cheers were more likely for him than what he said. A modest man, not given to oratory, he had delivered the speech in such a matter-of-fact way that not even James Bryant Conant, president of Harvard,
understood its significance. But the world would soon understand. Between 1948 and 1951, the United States would provide more than $13 billion to
sixteen European countries, nearly $130 billion
in 2015 dollars.

A key element of Marshall's plan was that American assistance would be provided in response to needs identified by the Europeans. British foreign minister Ernest Bevin and French foreign minister Georges Bidault reacted quickly, arranging a meeting with Soviet foreign minister Molotov in Paris shortly after Marshall's speech
to outline assistance needs. The three-way talks did not last long. Molotov announced on July 2, 1947, that the Soviets were withdrawing.