THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND THE COMING CLASS WAR----Episode 20

THE UNITED STATES BEGAN TO BUILD UP ARMAMENTS IN THE YEARS AFTER WW II

On January 31, 1950, Truman announced his decision to proceed with the hydrogen bomb. Two weeks later, Einstein appeared on the Eleanor Roosevelt television show to warn, " If these efforts should prove successful, radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere and, hence, annihilation of all  life on earth will have been brought within the range of what is technically possible." Physicist Leo Szilard soon delivered more terrifying news when he told a radio audience that the fusion of five hundred tons of deuterium in a hydrogen-cobalt bomb would be enough to "kill everybody on earth." 

Such warnings took a tremendous toll on the human psyche. As writer William Faulkner observed in his December 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, "Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question : When will I be blown up?" 

Kennan's [ He was our Soviet expert] replacement, Forrestal's protege' Paul Nitze, had been a vice president of the powerful Wall Street investment banking firm Dillon, Read when Forrestal was the firm's president. Nitze immediately took the lead in preparing NSC 68, a document that would fundamentally revamp the nation's posture. NSC 68 posited that the Soviet Union, armed with atomic bombs and "a fanatic faith faith," was seeking "to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world." [ Now, where in the fxzk is the evidence to even suggest this ???] Faced with an existential threat, the United States had to base its response not on what the Soviet Union was likely to do but on what, in its most malign moments, it was capable of doing : "a. To overrun Western Europe. . . ; to drive toward the oil-bearing areas of the Near and Middle East ; and to consolidate Communist gains in the Far East; b. To launch air attacks against the British Isles and air and sea attacks against the lines of communications of the Western Powers in the Atlantic and the Pacific ; c. To attack selected targets with atomic weapons, now including . . targets in Alaska, Canada, and the U.S." No area was outside the U.S defense perimeter because, as the document stated, "The assault on free institutions [??] is world-wide now, and . . . a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere." National security and global security were now one and the same. If the Soviet Union "calculates that it has sufficient atomic capability to make a surprise attack on us, nullifying our atomic superiority and creating a military situation decisively in its favor, the Kremlin might be tempted to strike swiftly and with stealth." 

Facing such a dangerous foe, Nitze concluded, U.S. survival depended on vastly increasing its nuclear and conventional arsenals, strengthening its armed forces,  bolstering its military alliances, and expanding its covert operations and psychological warfare capabilities. Over the next five years, military spending would have to quadruple to $50 billion, or 20 percent of GNP. Truman agreed with the NSC 68's assessment of the overall strategic situation and endorsed its conclusions but blanched at the cost, having announced plans to cut defense spending in the next fiscal year. Acheson and Nitze countered that quadrupling military spending would stimulate the economy and safeguard against another depression. The State Department's leading Soviet experts, George Kennan and Charles Bohlen, opposed such a buildup, contending that Stalin had neither the will NOR THE MEANS to pursue the kind of world conquest Acheson and Nitze envisioned. Much to Acheson and Nitze's disappointment, such a stupendous increase in military spending seemed dead in the water in early 1950. 

THIS SAD STORY WILL CONTINUE.