EVEN BEFORE HIS SEPTEMBER 12, 1946 SPEECH AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN, WALLACE HAD SENT A MEMO TO TRUMAN ON JULY 23 AND THAT MEMO WAS LEAKED TO THE PRESS
In the midst of the controversy over Wallace's Sept 12 speech, someone leaked Wallace's July 23 memo to Truman in which he identified the "fatal defect" in the Baruch plan. Several Soviet newspapers published it in its entirety.
That defect is the scheme . . . of arriving at international agreements by 'easy steps', of requiring other nations to enter into binding commitments not to conduct research into the military uses of atomic energy and to disclose uranium and thorium resources while the United States retains the right to withhold its technical knowledge of atomic energy until the international control and inspection system is working to our satisfaction.
Is it ny wonder that the Russians did not show any great enthusiasm for our plan ? . . . I think we would react as the Russians appear to have done. We would have put up a counterproposal for the record but our real effort would go into trying to make a bomb so that our bargaining position would be equalized. . .
. . . Realistically, Russia has two cards which she can use in negotiating with us :[1] our lack of information on the state of her scientific and technical progress on atomic energy and {2} our ignorance of her uranium and thorium resources. These cards are nothing like as powerful as our cards---a stockpile of bombs, manufacturing plants in actual production, B-29s and B-36s, and our bases covering half the globe. Yet we are in effect asking her to reveal her only two cards immediately --- telling her that after we have seen her cards we will decide whether we want to continue to play the game.
Truman insisted that Wallace stop talking about foreign policy while the postwar conference of the Council of Foreign Ministers was taking place. Byrnes had cabled Truman from Paris to complain that Wallace's speech and memo had thrown the meeting into complete disarray. Byrnes and Baruch were both threatening to resign. Truman feared that Forrestal and Secretary of War Robert Patterson would do likewise. He decided to fire Wallace and wrote a scathing letter demanding his resignation.
Support for Wallace had poured in throughout the controversy. Albert Einstein wrote, "I cannot refrain from expressing to you my high and unconditional admiration for your letter to the President of July 23rd. There is a deep understanding concerning the factual and psychological situation and a far-reaching perception of present American foreign policy. Your courageous intervention deserves the gratitude of all of us who observe the present attitude of our government with grave concern."
WITH WALLACE GONE, THE U.S. PLUNGED
HEADLONG INTO COLD WAR BOTH AT
HOME AND ABROAD
On September 24, the long-awaited report from the White House counsel Clark Clifford and his assistant George Elsey arrived. The comprehensive review of Soviet actions, intentions, and capabilities was intended to show that the Soviets had regularly violated their agreements. It painted dire picture of Soviet efforts "to weaken the position and destroy the prestige of the United States in Europe, Asia, and South America" so they could rule the world, while sowing discord in the United States through the Communist Party.
The United States needed to respond by beefing up its atomic arsenal, expanding its network of overseas bases, strengthening its military capabilities, and mobilizing its resources to "assist all democracies which are in any way menaced or endangered by the U.S.S.R." They failed, however, to document Soviet perfidy in regard to treaty obligations, admitting that "it is difficult to adduce direct evidence of literal violations."
In a penetrating critique of the report's distortions, historian Melvyn Leffler wrote, "Clifford and Elsey ignored actions that might have injected hues of gray into their black-and-white-characterization of Soviet foreign policy," such as all the instances where the Soviets had honored or exceeded their agreements, withdrawn their troops, allowed free elections, and discouraged insurrectionary activity."Double standards and self-deception repeatedly crept into the Clifford-Elsey report," he noted, adding
Truman's advisors did not ask how America's own questionable record of compliance affected Soviet behavior. They did not acknowledge that General Lucius Clay and other War Department officials consistently identified France, not Russia, as the principal source of U.S. problems in Germany. They suspected that any Soviet interest in German unification masked the Kremlin's quest to gain leverage over all of Germany, but conveniently dismissed the American desire to dilute Soviet influence in the east and to orient all of Germany to the West. Likewise, Clifford and Elsey pointed to the retention of Russian troops in Iran as irrefutable proof of the Soviet desire to dominate Iran and gain control of Middle Eastern oil. They did NOT say [and may not have known] that, at the very time they were writing their report, State Department officials and military planners were contending that the U.S. troops must remain beyond the stipulated deadlines for their withdrawal in Iceland, the Azores, Panama, the Galapagos, and other locations in order to augment American bargaining leverage for postwar base and military transit rights.
Leffler also accused them of presenting "a totally misleading rendition of Soviet capabilities." Clifford later admitted that it was the kind of "black and white" analysis that Truman liked.
Clifford and Elsey ruled out further efforts to negotiate with the Soviets. "The language of military power," they wrote, "is the only language" the Soviets understand. HENCE, THEY WARNED OMINOUSLY, "THE UNITED STATES MUST BE PREPARED TO WAGE ATOMIC AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE" AGAINST THE SOVIET UNION. Truman ordered Clifford to round up all ten copies of the report and lock them up. "If this got out," he snapped, "it would blow the roof off the White House, it would blow the roof off the Kremlin." It would also prove that Wallace, whom Truman had fired four days earlier, had been correct in all his warnings about the Hard-line confrontational direction of U.S. policy.
While the Soviets were imposing friendly left-wing governments in their sphere, the British were imposing right-wing governments in theirs. In Greece, the British army toppled the popular leftist National Liberation Front and restored the monarchy and right-wing dictatorship. Jailing of critics and other repressive measures soon sparked a Communist-led uprising. The Yugoslavs provided support but the Soviets did not, as Stalin abided by his wartime agreement with Churchill that placed Greece within the British sphere of influence.
MORE TO COME
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