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H-DIPLO ROUNDTABLE Arnold Offner, _Another Such Victory: President Truman
and the Cold War, 1945-1953_ (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002).

Roundtable Editor: Thomas Maddux

Reviewers: Mark Byrnes, Carolyn Eisenberg, Eduard Mark, Andrew Rotter,
William Stueck, Vladislav Zubok

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Response by Arnold Offner, Lafayette College

I have always regarded H-DIPLO as a useful means to stay abreast of
scholarly discussions. I was pleased to have H-DIPLO post my SHAFR
presidential address "'Another Such Victory': President Truman, American
Foreign Policy, and the Cold War" (_Diplomatic History_, Spring 1999) and
to have Walter Hixson find my "parochial nationalist" characterization of
Truman to be a "badly needed corrective to recent runaway Truman
historiography." Hixson said my "compelling evidence" made a "devastating
case" for perceiving Truman as a man who narrowed rather than expanded
options, and whose "unquestioned faith in his own nation's moral
superiority blinded him to the legitimate perspectives of other peoples
and leaders." Hixson noted I assigned "substantial responsibility"-not
exclusive blame-to Truman and the United States for the collapse of
East-West relations, and commented on how I demonstrated Truman's
influence on critical policy issues. Hixson added his own view that the
tendency of "triumphalist" scholars to use recent documents from the
Soviet archives to blame the Cold War "more or less exclusively" on Stalin
and the USSR revealed their "parochial nationalism."

Given that my SHAFR address was a preview of my forthcoming book, I was
pleased to agree to Tom Maddux's request to have _Another Such Victory_
critiqued on H-DIPLO. I hoped that reviewers would recognize that my
intention was to provide a thorough scholarly reassessment of Truman's
stewardship of U.S. foreign policy and the origins of the Cold War and
spur what I saw as needed scholarly exchange of ideas.

The reviews of Andrew Rotter, Carolyn Eisenberg, Mark Byrnes, and
Vladislav Zubok indicate that I have succeeded in my main purposes. In
Rotter's view, _Another Such Victory_ provides a "superb corrective to the
misty-eyed nostalgia" that has predominated since David McCullough's
_Truman_ (1992), and while I may not have "solved Truman in all ways and
for all time," I have "done more than anyone else to make us understand
the foreign policy of this mulish man from Missouri." Rotter finds my
study "impressively documented," notes my use of recently translated
Russian materials, properly contextualized within the larger body of
evidence derived from American and British sources including, I should
add, the voluminous British Foreign Office and Cabinet records and papers
of Ernest Bevin. Rotters's initial sympathies towards my views have become
"convictions."

Rotter finds legitimacy in my contentions about how Truman helped to shape
the Cold War by pursuing militant containment policies toward the Soviet
Union, turning local conflicts in Greece and Korea into international
confrontations, and pursuing an ideological hard line in China. At the
same time, Rotter notes that I give significant credit to Truman for the
Marshall Plan ("perhaps the most enduring and inspiring foreign policy
initiative of his administration"), his handling of the Berlin Blockade,
and his decision to preserve a non-communist South Korea in 1950.

Older issues remain to be debated, of course, and newer ones to be
explored. For example, Rotter questions whether there was much of a "lost
chance" to establish relations with Mao and his incipient People's
Republic of China in 1949. Surely full and friendly relations were
unlikely, but my reading of the works of many China scholars and
translated documents has led to my belief that there was a prospect for de
facto, or working, or back channel relations if the U.S. had been willing
to recognize the right of the Chinese communists (CCP) to rule their
country (on their terms) and cut off aid to the hostile Guomindang (GMD)
regime. In fact, in May 1949 Acheson proposed to apply only traditional
criteria for recognition: control of nation, fulfillment of obligations,
and general public acquiescence. But Truman's animus and hard line toward
Mao and the communists negated efforts to take up or generate CCP
overtures to talk or to try to come to grips with China's new realities.
Leaders cannot foresee the future, of course, but it seems fair to say-I
am certain Rotter would agree--that de facto or working relations might
have helped to avert the great Sino-American clash that came after the
start of the Korean War in June 1950. Rotter also finds that the
"fullness" of my evidence invites speculation about issues (outside the
scope of my book) such as the impact of psychology, race, or gender on
presidential policymaking. I would welcome exchanges with him or any other
interested scholars.

Finally, I appreciate Rotter's effort to locate my work within the various
"schools" of thought: a good deal more critical of Truman's foreign policy
than "orthodox" historians such as John Lewis Gaddis, more critical than
Melvyn Leffler, but less harsh than "radical revisionists" such as Joyce
and Gabriel Kolko, Gar Alperowitz (on the atomic bomb), and Bruce Cumings
(on the Korean War). Rotter concludes I fit most comfortably with
"moderate revisionists" such as William Williams, Walter LaFeber, Lloyd
Gardner, Barton Bernstein, and Thomas Paterson. In fact, I have benefitted
greatly from the works of all of these scholars, and wherever I might be
placed, I am honored to be mentioned with this group.

Carolyn Eisenberg welcomes _Another Such Victory_ as the first
large-scale, broad study of Truman's foreign policy that takes account of
newly available Russian and Chinese sources and makes "extensive and
judicious" use of the recent scholarly literature these records have
inspired. She views the book as a "formidable" and "nuanced" account that
reveals the "nonsense" underlying Truman hagiography and poses a powerful
challenge to triumphalist writers. She finds the book's "strongest
aspect"-albeit the one most likely to elicit controversy-to be my view
that U.S. policy made the postwar world more bloody and dangerous than it
needed to have been. But she concludes that I have made a "convincing
case" that the U.S. might have played a more constructive role if it had
more constructive leadership.

It is evident in my analysis of U.S. policy regarding Germany that I have
profited from Eisenberg's superb _Drawing the Line: The American Decision
to Divide Germany, 1944-1949_ (1999), which demonstrates the extent to
which U.S. officials took the initiative in political and economic
decisions regarding Germany that led to that country's division. But she
does raise an important question: whether responsibility for decisions
that led to Germany's division rested chiefly with Truman or with his
State and Defense department subordinates, and if the latter, does that
undercut my emphasis on Truman's role as policymaker? The answer, I
believe, is that Truman as president played a significant role, directly
and indirectly, in shaping U.S. policy toward Germany by virtue of his own
views, his standing at the pinnacle of the diplomatic and military
establishment, and his choice of advisers (who often anticipated his
preference for "black and white" explications, as White House counsel
Clark Clifford later said). Further, because negotiations over Germany so
directly involved the Soviets, Truman's views of the latter influenced
thinking about the former. At the same time Cabinet officers and senior
officials in the bureaucracy inevitably played important roles by pressing
their views and drafting position papers for negotiations and the
"selling" of policy to Congress and the public.

Truman, who took far less of a "retributive justice" attitude toward
Germany than FDR, quickly made clear his resistance to the Yalta accords'
proposed payment of an approximate $20 billion (with half to the Russians)
in reparations taken from all of Germany. He replaced FDR's reparations
negotiator with the conservative Edwin Pauley, who dismissed the Yalta
accords and State Department estimates that Germany could pay about $12-14
billion, and proposed a "first charge" on current production reparations
that gave preference to payment of occupation costs, foodstuffs, and
imports over Russian reparations. Truman also accorded with Secretary of
War Henry Stimson's emphasis of traditional U.S. belief in the centrality
of revived German trade to a healthy world economy, and at Potsdam sided
with Secretary of State James Byrnes' hard line zonal reparations policy
(and determination to deny Ruhr access to the USSR) that was a harbinger
of economic-political division of Germany. And as Eisenberg has
demonstrated in her book, U.S. refusal to settle on any fixed sum of
reparations cut deep with the Soviets for reasons of security, national
pride, and material necessity. (Norman Naimark offers a similar view,
albeit from a different perspective, in his excellent _The Russians in
Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949_ [1995].)

Truman also approved Byrnes' Stuttgart speech in September 1946, which
made clear that if the Russians balked at American terms for German
unification, the U.S. would unify the western zones and might reconsider
its de facto acceptance of Poland's expansion of its border with Germany
to the Oder-western Neisse rivers, thus forcing the Russians to choose
between their Polish allies or German Communists. Perhaps Truman missed
the subtlety of this latter aspect of Byrnes' maneuver, but he cheered his
having called the Russian "bluff" and forced Secretary of Commerce Henry
Wallace to resign for publicly dissenting over Byrnes' action and U.S.
policy in general.

Truman influenced U.S. negotiations at the critical foreign ministers'
meeting in Moscow in April 1947. When Secretary of State George Marshall,
at the advice of the U.S. Military Commander in Germany, General Lucius
Clay, proposed to offer current production reparations to induce Soviet
agreement on German unification, Truman vetoed the idea, causing even the
extremely respectful Marshall to complain about lack of "elbow room,"
while Clay quit the conference to return to Berlin. Meanwhile the
president reiterated to his Cabinet that he was "solidly against"
reparations and did not think there was need for further talks.

I also credit Truman with positive influence on policy, including his
willingness in 1948, when he was presumed to be a "lame duck" president
and under "bipartisan" fire on civil rights, labor, and taxes to expend
his limited political capital mustering support for passage of the
European Recovery Program, or Marshall Plan. This complex program spurred
American-European trade and economic recovery, brought France somewhat
into camp with Germany, and revived but contained the 1930s "German
colossus" that Truman and his aides feared to recreate. Further, while I
agree with Eisenberg that the Marshall Plan and formation of a West German
state spurred European division and, as she points out in _Drawing the
Line_, that the president did not seem to grasp the link between U.S.
support for the London Plan (that presaged West Germany) and the
Stalin-initiated Berlin blockade, I credit Truman for making clear to his
advisers his determination to avert military conflict and to keep his
control over atomic weapons. (After the crisis he insisted that military
requests for atomic weapons should come first via the National Security
Council, thereby protecting himself from immediate pressure of high
ranking military officials.) And while Eisenberg rightly notes that Truman
did not challenge his advisers during the Berlin crisis, that was because
he agreed with their view about the necessity of integrating a West German
state into an American-Western European political-economic orbit.

Thus while I would not claim that Truman kept abreast of every critical
matter relating to postwar negotiations over Germany, I think from the
outset he set a meaningful tone and played a significant role, although
Eisenberg's comprehensive _Drawing the Line_ goes into far greater detail
and puts greater emphasis on how the major diplomatic and military figures
and the bureaucracies they headed served to shape U.S. decisions regarding
Germany during 1944-1949. (I could not match this rich detail in a book
that covers many other subjects during 1945-1953.) What is most important,
however, is the extent to which Eisenberg's and my views are in accord
about how and why Germany came to be divided and the Cold War implications
of that division. (I will discuss Truman's impact on policy in China and
Korea shortly.)

Mark Byrnes' review praises my "judicious" and "consistently fair"
treatment of Truman's foreign policy, and kindly opines that I am too
careful a scholar to lay sole blame on Truman and the U.S. for the Cold
War. He notes that I distinguish between Truman's European diplomacy,
which heightened Soviet-American conflict and hastened division of the
Continent, and what I perceive as tragic American intervention in Asian
civil wars which led to immense loss of life and physical destruction and
a generation of Sino-American enmity. (Some scholars would say this
ultimately led to the Vietnam War.)

Byrnes does contend that Truman's impact on U.S. foreign policy was
arguably less important than that of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, John
Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and that Truman's key advisers such as Acheson
and Marshall were sophisticated, not parochial. Hence Byrnes wonders how
much Truman or his parochial style affected policy.

My answer is a great deal. As noted in my commentary on Carolyn
Eisenberg's review, presidents affect policy directly and indirectly just
by virtue of their office. Truman, with great assist and/or instruction
from Secretary of State Byrnes (who was quite nationalist, parochial, and
inexperienced in foreign affairs), quickly moved away from FDR's
finesse-style diplomacy at Yalta in February 1945 towards a more
confrontational approach at Potsdam that July. This was evident in the
Americans' insistence on zonal reparations, nonrecognition of Eastern
European governments, and even Truman's refusal to inform the Soviets in
any way about U.S. readiness and intent to use atomic bombs against Japan.
(Truman's reference to Stalin on July 24 about having a new weapon of
great power was not a wise or effective deception.) Most important, I
think the evidence in my book (drawn from numerous primary sources
indicating Truman's and Byrnes' belief that they had an "ace-in-the-hole,"
or "dynamite," that would be "controlling" in negotiations) clearly shows
that during the Potsdam negotiations they were tempted to engage in
"atomic poker"-but not "atomic blackmail"-in an effort to "out maneuver"
(as Byrnes said) the Soviets in China, Japan, and in Europe.

Other instances that reflect the impact of Truman and/or his nationalism
on policy are his "Give Em Hell" support for Secretary Byrnes' "bomb in
his pocket" diplomacy in London in September 1945, and his support that
autumn during Cabinet debates about whether to approach the Russians with
respect to international control of atomic power, a step favored by-among
others-Stimson, Under Secretary of State Acheson, and Vannevar Bush, the
president's scientific adviser and head of the Office of Scientific
Research and Development. Instead, Truman favored the "ultranationalism"
(to use Acting Secretary of the Interior Abe Fortas' term) and weak
analogies as expressed in the views of Secretary of Agriculture Clinton
Anderson, Treasury Secretary Fred Vinson, and Senator Kenneth McKellar,
who persisted that America's lead in technology and automobile production
assured permanent atomic supremacy. Truman held that the U.S. was the
world's atomic "trustee" and other nations had to "catch up on their own
hook." Then in 1946 he undermined the Acheson-David Lilienthal plan for
international control of atomic weapons and resources by naming Bernard
Baruch chief negotiator and supporting, over Acheson's and Lilienthal's
objections, terms (close inspections, sanctions, no veto, and indefinite
U.S. monopoly) that virtually assured Soviet rejection of the U.S.
proposals.

To be sure, David Holloway has skillfully shown in _Stalin and the Bomb:
The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956_ (1994), that agreement was
improbable in 1946 given that U.S. and Soviet proposals derived from
entirely different negotiating perspectives and that Stalin was unlikely
to make an agreement until he secured atomic bomb parity. But my point
remains: the U.S. did little to close the negotiating gap and Truman
evidently believed, as Baruch said, that the bomb provided a "winning
weapon." Or as Holloway has concluded, "neither Truman nor Stalin saw the
atomic bomb as a common danger for the human race." (The same could be
said about their development of the hydrogen bomb.)

There are numerous other issues I might cite where Truman heightened Cold
War conflict. This ranges from the global, absolutist rhetoric he used in
announcing the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to his (previously noted)
disdainful attitude toward the Chinese Communists that shut off every
prospect for conversations. His belief that the PRC leaders were "complete
satellites" of the Soviet Union and bent on conquering Korea and Southeast
Asia was not only gross exaggeration but revealed his incomprehension of
Chinese and Asian nationalism and the complex nature of China's relations
with old Russia and then the Soviet Union. Further, Truman's decision to
engage in "regime change" in North Korea in autumn 1950 rested in good
part (there were political pressures, of course) on his Biblical belief
that "punishment always follows transgression," as well as Acheson's
imperial outlook that Korea would serve as a "stage to show the world what
Western Democracy" can do for "underprivileged countries."

Then Truman's personal diplomacy during the Korean War armistice
negotiations led the U.S. to brush aside both its commitment to the 1949
Geneva Convention and standard military practice-which called for "all for
all" compulsory exchange of POWs-and to insist instead on voluntary
repatriation. To be sure, Truman acted partly for moral reasons: he
deplored the Soviets' brutal treatment of their returning POWs after 1945.
But he also believed that he could embarrass the PRC and North Korea and
gain his way by bombing the Chinese and North Koreans into submission or
by offering to limit the bombing. Ultimately the settlement that President
Dwight Eisenhower's administration concluded in July 1953 afforded Truman
belated victory, as I state in my book: nonrepatriable POWs were turned
over to a neutral nations' commission for ultimate release as civilians.
But the price of Truman's policy, aside from discard of standard policy on
POWs, was to delay the war's end by about twelve to eighteen months and to
add greatly to the already vast human and material costs for all involved
nations.

Finally, I concur with Byrnes' conclusion that many senior officials
shared some of the less appealing characteristics (e.g., insecurity or
arrogance) that I ascribe to Truman but that these traits were masked by
the officials' more polished manner, and that the administration's
mistakes (and successes) were bigger than one man or one group. These are
valid points. But truth to be told, I set the bar higher and expect more
from the person at the head of our government, and attribute
responsibility to that person for the actions of his administration.

I am also pleased to see the assessment of Vladislav Zubok, whose study
with Constantine Pleshakov, _Inside the Kremlin's Cold War: From Stalin to
Khrushchev_ (1996), has offered a stimulating analysis of how personality,
ideological and geopolitical influences (the "revolutionary-imperial
paradigm"), U.S. actions, and power politics have shaped Soviet policy.
Zubok agrees with numerous of my major contentions, disagrees with others
or interprets or emphasizes events in different fashion, and yet concludes
on a note of concern-which I share-that in year 2002 American foreign
policy seems to be influenced "by the parochial culture and ideology that
had driven Truman," with results that will be mixed.

Zubok -like Rotter, Eisenberg, and Byrnes- agrees that no one leader or
nation caused the Cold War, and adds that it is "too simplistic" to blame
it all on Stalin. Zubok states as well that I am "absolutely right" that
Truman and his advisers greatly exaggerated Stalin's aggressiveness and
that it is "hard to disagree with the list of mistakes, errors, and
misjudgments, small or large" of the Truman administration that appear in
the conclusion of _Another Such Victory_. Zubok is in accord that in 1945
Stalin's goals were limited (unlike Hitler, he did not want to risk war)
and he agrees "emphatically" that "Stalin put Soviet state interests ahead
of his desire to spread communist ideology." Zubok has also written in
_Inside the Kremlin's Cold War_ that Stalin believed he needed years of
peace to enable the USSR to recover from the wartime destruction and that
he sought to avoid confrontation with the West, although he did
misperceive or overreact to events, or miscalculate, and bring on Cold War
conflicts he presumably sought to avert.

Zubok dissents from my emphasis on Truman's role in the Cold War by
contending that it was not just the "parochial" Truman but also more
liberal and sophisticated officials who took early hard line stances
toward Stalin and the Soviet Union, and that derived in good part from
recent (bad) memories of "appeasement" of Hitler and the handicap of
operating in Cold War "fog" without intelligence that could correct
Truman's instincts and misperceptions regarding the Soviets. Zubok also
doubts that any U.S. concessions could have transformed Stalin into a
"gentleman," and that he was unlikely even to have agreed to the
Acheson-Lilienthal-Plan, while the U.S. could not have voluntarily given
up its hegemony over atomic weapons.

This line of argument is fair but we need to probe more deeply to
understand U.S. policy and to see how and why Truman and his
administration made conflict in the postwar era far more ideologically
virulent and politically and militarily confrontational-and
"bloodier"-than it needs to have been. Thus with regard to atomic power,
no one ever proposed to relinquish that advantage voluntarily, but in
September 1945 Stimson and Acheson proposed a direct approach to the
Russians regarding international control. Truman refused, however, because
he believed that the bomb was America's "sacred trust," that there was a
real atomic "secret," and he sided-as noted earlier-with the
"ultranationalists" who thought the U.S. could maintain permanent
superiority. Shortly he gave way to British pressure to try to establish
an atomic-scientific exchange program through the UN, and Byrnes got
Stalin's accord at the Moscow CFM in December 1945. Acheson and Lilienthal
then developed their program for UN control of atomic resources, but
Baruch pressed his too stringent terms, while Truman-the poker
player-urged him to "stand pat," and persisted that "we should not under
any circumstance throw away our gun . . . ." This despite Acheson's
insistence there could be no agreement if the U.S. continued its atomic
bomb production, to say nothing of the Bikini Island test on July 1, 1946,
at a critical juncture in negotiations. Similarly, Interior Secretary
Harold Ickes said the U.S. atomic program and acquisition of global bases
made it appear the U.S. was "preparing to win an inevitable war." Not
surprisingly the Soviets balked at any accord; they did not have parity.

Thus the nuclear arms race would continue without cease until the late
1960s, when the Soviets gained parity and both sides found utility in at
least limiting their nuclear weapons. Hence the 1972 SALT and ABM
agreements. Or stated otherwise, successful negotiations are far more
likely when the two sides are at parity; otherwise, the law of power
politics seems to be that the side ahead seeks to preserve its lead, while
the other side resists any agreement that leaves it at a disadvantage. To
say nothing of the fact-as per Holloway-that neither Stalin nor Truman
understood the threat of atomic weapons to civilization.

Stalin certainly blustered over Iran and Turkey, but it is possible that
again "parity" was an important issue: desire for an oil concession in
Iran to match the Americans and British, and long-promised revision of the
1936 Montreux Convention to allow the Russians a share in control of the
Turkish Straits. Stalin's precise aims remain unclear but Wallace Murray,
U.S. Ambassador to Iran, and British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin,
thought Stalin's goal in Iran was an oil concession to gain equal footing
with the U.S. and Britain. And no one-including the Turkish
government-thought the Soviets intended to attack Turkey. Meanwhile the
U.S. was planning to integrate Turkey into its strategic planning as a
base of operations in case of war with the Soviets and to establish a
predominant naval command in the Mediterranean. As Admiral William "Bull"
Halsey said in August 1946 when asked about movement of the Sixth Fleet
into the Mediterranean, "It's nobody's damn business where we go."

One should also remember that it was in September 1946 that Clark Clifford
prepared his famous "Russian Report"-which included the bogus "Last Will
of Peter the Great"-for Truman that was comprised of little more than
hasty apocalyptic projections of Soviet intentions to conquer the world by
military force and subversion. Truman confined the report to his desk, but
he also believed it. And as Clifford later said, it was a short step from
the Russian Report to the Truman Doctrine-and intervention in the Greek
civil war, which was not Stalin's baby. But the Truman Doctrine locked the
U.S. into an ideological-global conflict with the Soviets (an "ideological
straitjacket" for U.S. policy, John Gaddis once rightly wrote) and a
policy in Greece that substituted annihilation of the enemy over reform of
political and socio-economic conditions that had prompted civil war. U.S.
policy also sustained right-wing repressive governments in Greece over the
next three decades.

Then there's the German issue. I agree entirely with Vlad Zubok that it
would have taken more than $10 billion in German reparations to change
Stalin into a "gentleman." But as Carolyn Eisenberg and Norman Naimark
have shown in their books, U.S. failure-really, unwillingness-to reach
agreement with the Russians at Potsdam in 1945 cut deep with the Soviets,
who had suffered incredible ravages from German invasions during the two
recent world wars. Thus Stalin could do little but recognize the
"correlation of forces" and accede to Byrne's zonal reparations plan.
Later in April 1947 Truman refused to permit Marshall and Clay to try to
reach a critical reparations accord that they perceived might serve to
effect four-power agreement on Germany. Indeed, the growing gulf between
the U.S. professed intent to seek a unified Germany and the stance the
U.S. took in negotiations was clearly recognized by Walter Bedell Smith,
U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, when he wrote to General Eisenhower in December
1947: "The difficulty under which we labor is that in spite of our avowed
position, we really do not want nor intend to accept German unification in
any terms that the Russians might agree to, even though they seemed to
meet most of our requirements. . . . However, this puts us in a somewhat
difficult position, and it will require careful maneuvering to avoid the
appearance of inconsistency or hypocrisy." (See Jean Edward Smith, _Lucius
D. Clay: An American Life_ (1990), p. 447.)

The Americans, of course, now intended to use the three western zones of
Germany as the basis for the Marshall Plan and to establish a West German
state. This in turn spurred (as Kennan predicted) Stalin's clampdown in
Eastern Europe and then his Berlin blockade, which-as Zubok has shown in
his book-served not to undermine Western policy but to cause Western
Europe to gravitate closer to the U.S. for protection from the "red
menace"-including use of West Germany as the basis for NATO.

Seen in retrospect, perhaps four power agreement on unification of Germany
was not possible in the post-1945 world. Certainly the U.S. was not going
to grant the Russians their reparations or access to the Ruhr; and belief
was pervasive in Washington that the Soviets, or their communist agents,
would use the machinery of a central government to subvert the state to
their will. And on the Soviet side, it is questionable as to how much
political independence or freedom the Soviets would have permitted, to say
nothing of the protracted battles over denazification, demilitarization,
and economic structure that would have to have been resolved before
agreement on a new German state could have been finalized.

Perhaps then both sides, each fearful that the other would seek to pull a
unified Germany into its camp, really opted for the division of Germany as
a means to maintain a balance of power, or parity, that seemed less risky
than losing the whole of Germany to the other side. And for all its
attendant consequences, this was the unspoken arrangement-as A. W. Deporte
pointed out years ago in _Europe Between the Superpowers: The Enduring
Balance_ (1979)-that kept the peace (at least between the U.S. and USSR).
But to say this is to say something quite different from the traditional
American argument that the Soviets deliberately aimed at the division of
Germany in order to build a base to overrun the rest of Western Europe.

Two final points, one about Asian policy, the other about current policy.
I wish Zubok had dealt with my chapters on Asia, if only because his own
book indicates that Stalin regarded Mao and the Chinese Revolution as
intruders on his plans to deal with the U.S. for concessions in Manchuria
and northern China, and Stalin did not even invite Mao to Moscow until
after he proclaimed the People's Republic in 1949. This only underscores
my own emphasis on U.S. failure to distinguish the Chinese revolution from
the Soviet-American cold war and to "play for a split" (to use Acheson's
term) between the PRC and Soviet Union. Zubok also notes that Stalin
seriously erred when he gave arms and license to Kim Il Sung's regime to
invade South Korea, but that ultimately Stalin the realpolitiker was
prepared to allow North Korea to be crushed rather than have the USSR
fight advancing U.S./UN forces. But Chinese intercession-at Stalin's
urging-resolved his dilemma, and also led to lasting Sino-American animus
and made the PRC more dependent than ever on the Soviets. But if the U.S.
had heeded China's warnings and not gone north of the 38th parallel, the
Cold War would have been far less bloody and Sino-American relations need
not have been so poisoned and led to such long-term and dire consequences.

Finally I greatly appreciate Vlad Zubok's noting that _Another Such
Victory_ reminds him of the "cultural and ideological similarities between
Texan [George] Bush and Missourian Truman" and between the foreign policy
consensus that guided the Truman administration and the current
administration. I also appreciate what I read as an expression of concern
that neoconservatives will dismiss my book as "liberal wishful thinking."
So be it.

In fact, I wrote the book before Bush "won" the 2000 election so any
similarity between his administration and Truman's is of Bush's making,
not mine. But more important-and without becoming embroiled in a debate
over current policy-I do see in the Bush administration (even more than in
Truman's) a form of ultranationalism (or perhaps unilateralism
masquerading as internationalism), a belief that the U.S. can just walk
away from such things as the Kyoto protocol on global warming, the ABM
agreement, the Middle East peace process, and the International Criminal
Court, and still proclaim that it is the leader of the international
order. Similarly, the new U.S. national security doctrine of September
2002 virtually proclaims all other nations must follow or adhere to U.S.
political and economic principles, and any nation that attempts to match
the U.S. arms build-up faces a prospective U.S. first strike. This strikes
me less as leading the international order than proclaiming world
hegemony, with little effort made to understand or come to grips with the
vastly different realities and beliefs that exist among so many people and
in so many places on the globe. The results of this policy, I fear, will
ultimately be worse than "mixed"; they will be tragic. We may inflict
military defeat on a few of the more obvious "evil" foes, but the
long-term results of our cultural hubris will bring only pyrrhic
victories.

I find the comments by William Stueck and Eduard Mark, to be puzzling, to
say the least.

They are, of course, entitled to express their extreme orthodox (or
perhaps "ultranationalist," to reference Fortas) views about U.S. foreign
policy, and to put more or less exclusive blame on Stalin and the Soviet
Union and Mao and the PRC for the escalating the Cold War during
1945-1953. Stueck and Mark may also insist that ideology was the
determining force in Soviet and Chinese leaders' policy choices, and
contend that whether Stalin was in a confrontational or cooperative mode,
the goal-without reference to any known timetable-was to expand the area
of communism as far as possible. (The logic of this latter view, of
course, is that the best negotiations with the Soviet Union were no
negotiations.) Stueck and Mark are also entitled to quote themselves or
one another approvingly in an effort to score points, and to use acerbic
language to seek to bolster their contentions. They may also express their
disdain for "revisionist" historians, although I generally assumed that
all good historians, whether they be mining new sources or reassessing
older ones, are "revisionists" of a sort as they try to work past
official, or received, history in search of always elusive truth.

I seriously question, however, Stueck's and Mark's misrepresentations or
misstatements of my views and their use of innuendo. Let me begin with the
innuendo.

Stueck knows that I regard as logical and legitimate Truman's intervention
in June 1950 to preserve South Korea, a UN-recognized state, from North
Korea's aggression across the 38th parallel. But apparently angry that I
criticize Truman's later actions-failure to seek a Congressional
declaration of war, escalation of the "police action" into an
international conflict, and decision to send forces across the 38th
parallel to destroy the North Korean state-Stueck writes: "perhaps Offner
wishes that Truman had disdained intervention in June 1950 to give all the
Korean people the opportunity to experience the blessings of Kim Il-Sung's
rule."

I would hope that if Stueck paused to reflect on his words he would feel
as greatly embarrassed as he should for having made this baseless
statement. And as for my criticisms of Truman's actions or policies, I
would assume Stueck knows I am hardly the only, first, or last scholar to
express critical views.

Stueck uses innuendo again while discussing my contention that Truman's
insistence-and that of some other officials-on only voluntary repatriation
of POWs derived from a sense of moral and military superiority and desire
to embarrass the PRC and North Korea. Although Stueck acknowledges the
dubious legality of the U.S. position under the Geneva accord and that my
view of the POW matter is "plausible," he then states: "yet nowhere does
he [Offner] acknowledge that Truman and his advisers were morally superior
to leaders on the other side (one wonders if he would deny this, and, if
so, why)."

In fact, what I wonder is whether Stueck is proposing a new standard for
all historians, or just those whose views he does not like, to attest to
their belief in the moral superiority of American leaders as opposed to
those on "the other side"? And if historians do not so attest, are readers
to assume that the criticisms are not valid, or that the scholars are
suspect in some way? And whose moral standard shall we use and how shall
we apply it?

For example, I have explicitly stated in _Another Such Victory_ that
Truman and Secretary Byrnes were neither "sinners nor saints," detailed
the extremely complex reasons that led to use of atomic bombs, and said
that years of brutal warfare harden human sensibilities. Still, I can
imagine that some people might question the morality of dropping two bombs
on Japan without specific warning that they were atomic bombs, which meant
greater and qualitatively different damage would be inflicted, in the
short term and long term, on the civilian populations than if conventional
bombs were used. Then, too, there were atrocities committed on both sides
during the civil war in Greece and on both sides of the 38th parallel in
Korea during the civil war and post-1950 conflict there. Further, the U.S.
did engage in massive bombing of North Korea intended to disrupt spring
plantings and cut off food supplies, and Defense Secretary Robert Lovett
contended in 1952 that if the Chinese and North Koreans did not accept
U.S. terms for the POW's "we can tear them up by air."

Clearly, General Sherman was correct to say that war is hell, and John
Dower aptly titled his study of U.S.-Japan conflict in the 1940s _War
Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War_ (1986), without, I
believe, suggesting moral superiority on one side or the other. In fact, I
had thought-despite Stueck's view-that we were long past the era when
historians or anyone else would be asked to attest to the superior
morality of their nations' leaders whether in criticism or praise of their
policies.

Mark also uses innuendo. He begins his comments deploring the "lamentable
tendency among diplomatic historians to do little research in primary
sources once their dissertations and first books are out of the way," and
concludes with his opinion that _Another Such Victory_ is a book for
"aging revisionists who wish it were still 1975 and that they still had
honest illusions (rather than today's desperate self-deceptions) that
Stalin, while a homicidal nutcase at home, was not a bad Joe abroad . . .
."

I have not carefully surveyed how much primary source research other
diplomatic historians do-and do not know if Mark has-but I can attest that
his statement lacks any relevancy to my scholarship, past or present. As
for the revisionists I know, they neither traffic in "desperate
self-deceptions" nor do they long for 1975, when the U.S. was suffering
from the aftermath of the wretched Watergate episode, the frightful
Vietnam War was reaching its frightful end, and when New York City-my
hometown-asked President Gerald Ford for federal aid, he responded, as the
New York _Daily News_ headline paraphrased him: "Drop Dead."

Misstatements or misrepresentations of _Another Such Victory_ are frequent
in Stueck's and Mark's commentaries. For example Stueck says that (on p.
470) I "botch" my account of the end of the Korean War fighting in 1953 by
"implying that it came about as a result of Eisenhower's willingness to
make a compromise on the POW issue that Truman had resisted." Stueck
ignores that earlier, on p. 418-in the section of my chapter that deals
with the conclusion of the Korean war-I explicitly stated with respect to
the issue of voluntary repatriation of POWs that the Communists
"substantially accepted the U.S. terms, including final release of the
POWs as civilians," and that this led Secretary of State John Foster
Dulles to say that the outcome "far exceeds our most optimistic
expectation." I then wrote: "The U.S., and belatedly Truman, had won on
the issue of voluntary, or nonforcible, repatriation."

Stueck also follows a questionable line of argument regarding
Sino-American relations. He says that Mao's interpretation of
international events was "heavily ideological," that he was "aggressively
solicitous" of the Soviet Union, that a peaceful solution to CCP-GMD power
sharing would have required arrangements neither side could have accepted,
that Sino-American rapprochement in 1949 was unlikely, and that Mao soon
negotiated "new unequal agreements with Stalin." Stueck seeks to bolster
his views by reference to Chen Jian,_ Mao's China and the Cold War_
(published in 2001 while _Another Such Victory_ was already in press),
although Chen Jian had already made these arguments in his earlier (1994)
_China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American
Confrontation_, and I deal carefully and respectfully with this book and
its contentions-as well as with the recent works of many other China
scholars.

Further, it is not surprising that Mao looked to Stalin for aid given that
during the civil war the U.S. continued its "double," or "two-handed"
policy, as the Chinese would say, of trying to mediate while arming the
GMD, and in 1949-1950 the U.S. permitted Jiang's forces to use
American-marked planes to bomb China's coastal cities indiscriminately,
which led Philip Sprouse, head of the State Department's Office of Chinese
Affairs to say that it was "incredible" that the U.S. would allow a client
state to call the turn on America's vital interests and allow it to be
arraigned before the bar of Chinese opinion. In addition, everyone knows
that prospects for GMD-CCP power-sharing were slim, but the U.S. at least
should have tried to restrain its client, who had a long record of
breaking accords. Indeed, even Marshall said upon departing China in late
1946 that GMD "reactionaries" had destroyed negotiations by their policy
of force.

Further, as I have noted earlier, full U.S.-PRC relations were unlikely in
1949, but Stueck ignores the extent to which the U.S. worsened chances of
even limited accord with the PRC, with high ranking U.S. officials
insisting that the CCP had just moved from "caves to chancelleries" and
not proven they could govern, and also talking about perhaps fostering a
"new revolution" that would come to a "test of arms" with the CCP. And
then Acheson's letter of transmittal with the August 1949_China White
Paper_ (ironically intended to show China critics that the U.S. had
faithfully aided the GMD) amounted to a "diatribe" against the CCP for
allegedly having forsworn their Chinese heritage and masking foreign
(Soviet) domination behind the facade of nationalism. (On the "diatribe,"
see Gordon Chang, _Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the
Soviet Union, 1948-1972_[1990], pp. 36-41.) This only further antagonized
Mao and undoubtedly caused him to lean even further to one side.

As for the "unequal" Sino-Soviet treaty of February 1950, the Chinese got
more from the Soviets than vice versa, as demonstrated in Sergei
Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, _Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao,
and the Korean War_ (1995). The Yalta accords were virtually negated, with
the Chinese regaining control of the Manchurian railways, and the Soviets
agreed to evacuate their troops from Lushun by 1952 and to withdraw from
Dalny after a peace accord was signed with Japan. The Russians also
assured their military support in event of an attack on the PRC by the
U.S. or one of its clients, while the Chinese were obligated to give the
Soviets support only on matters of common interest-not "international"
issues that might arise in such far away places as Europe. Thus Mao could
say he had expelled foreigners from China, gained security (as Chen Jian
notes), got a far better deal from Stalin than Jiang had gotten in 1945,
and perhaps now other nations would recognize the PRC and abrogate unequal
treaties.

The political window of opportunity for the U.S. to act was fast closing
at home and abroad in 1950, as _Another Such Victory_ indicates. Still, it
is worth noting that Michael Hunt, in his carefully crafted _The Genesis
of Chinese Communist Foreign Policy_ (1996), has pointed out that Mao was
not only a Marxist but a Chinese patriot and populist who was determined
to throw off foreign domination and imperial control (dating at least from
the Opium War) and restore the Middle Kingdom to its rightful place in
Asia and perhaps the world. He was amenable to relations with the U.S. but
not desperate for them, at least not to the point of giving up his
revolution (on this point see also Thomas Christensen, _Useful
Adversaries: Grand Strategy, Domestic Mobilization, and Sino-American
Conflict, 1947-1958_ [1996] pp. 144-147), and he was less subservient to
Stalin than the Soviet leader had expected and Truman and his aides had
presumed. Mao's primary concern in 1949 was domestic reconstruction, and
there is no evidence that prior to the Korean War he intended to battle
the U.S. or use force, alone or in concert with the USSR, to oust the U.S.
from its position in Asia. Granted that Hunt's 1996 assessment was not
available to the Truman administration, it is one I think scholars who
evaluate American relations with China, as well as with other Asian
nations, might consider worthy of note.

Eduard Mark's comments are replete with misstatements or
misrepresentations of my words and ideas. A few examples will suffice. He
attacks my view of Stalin as a ruthless dictator who presided over a
police state and did not hesitate to imprison or kill political opponents
but who also pursued a "brutal realpolitik abroad and was always ready to
jettison ideology in favor of diplomatic gain." Mark then declares that
the "heart" of my vision of Stalin's foreign policy is the "implicit
assumption" that realpolitik and "ideology" are antithetical, and he then
constructs a syllogism which he alleges represents my view, namely, that
since ideologues seek aggrandizement, but Stalin was sometimes moderate,
he was no ideologue.

Unfortunately, I do not make any such assumption as he alleges about
realpolitik and ideology, and I think the syllogism that he has invented
appears to be less the construct of an inquiring historian than the
rhetorical device of a Grand Inquisitor. What I have done is drawn on the
works of major scholars who have studied Soviet foreign policy, added my
views based on my reading of events, and then posited some conclusions.
These include the view that however much Stalin was a devoted Marxist or
ideologue, he did bargain in international affairs (including cynically),
he treated states rather than classes as the primary actors in
international affairs, he was given to weighing the "correlation of
forces," and he gave preference to Soviet state interests over
international revolution, which might come in the long term but for the
time being-however long that proved-his primary goals were to seek
recompense for the immense costs of the Second World War, to regain older
imperial concessions, and to gain security against former enemies such as
Germany and Japan as well as any prospective new coalition of hostile
powers. I note as well that Stalin believed, as he said, that whoever
occupied a territory imposed his social system on it.

It is also true that Stalin did not like or was suspicious of
strong-willed Communist leaders such as Marshal Tito and Mao, and he also
made major miscalculations that only heated the Cold War, such as when he
instituted the Berlin blockade, or believed that giving arms to Kim Il
Sung in 1950 would permit him to win a quick military victory to unify
Korea.

Time and space do not allow me to explicate the lines of argument of the
many works that have provided the basis for my views of Stalin but a brief
list of some major books would include: Holloway, _ Stalin and the Bomb_,
which acknowledges Stalin's view of politics as rooted in Lenin's theory
of imperialism but also notes the impact on his thinking of the interwar
years-and threats that Germany and Japan had posed-and sets out the
realpolitik or realist framework that Stalin adopted for the post-1945-era
(pp. 150-171); Naimark, _The Russians in Germany_, which notes the
different intents and purposes of Soviet policy in its "security zone" in
Eastern Europe and in Germany, where Stalin's plans were uncertain,
opportunistic, and "hazy," (p.10) but primacy was given to gaining $10
billion in reparations by maintaining a flexible policy to accommodate to
possible four-power agreement on German unification, demilitarization, and
neutralism (pp. 465-466); Naimark also notes that the Soviets greatly
feared German integration into an American condominium; Carolyn
Kennedy-Pipe, _Stalin's Cold War: Soviet Strategies in Europe, 1943-1956_
(1995), which notes how Soviet rulers "jettisoned active pursuit of
revolution" to focus on "security and survival" and pursued policies in
Germany that ranged from encouraging U.S. occupation to keep Germany
divided to resistance to U.S. efforts to integrate West Germany into its
political-military (NATO) orbit; Zubok and Pleshakov, _Inside the
Kremlin's Cold War_, who downplay their revolutionary-imperial paradigm
with respect to Stalin when they note that in 1945 he "was fully prepared
to shelve ideology, at least for a time, and adhere only to the concept of
a balance of power" (p. 34); they note further that ideology was neither
the servant nor handmaiden of Soviet foreign policy, that Stalin was not
prepared to undertake unbridled confrontation with the West, that he did
see better ways to extend his influence through cooperation and resolution
of contentious international issues, that the Cold War "was not his
brainchild," and that Soviet postwar foreign policy was "more defensive,
reactive, and prudent than it was the fulfillment of a master plan"; they
note too they cannot ignore other Cold War culprits, including the
"choices of U.S. and British policymakers" and democracy-dictatorship
distrust in an uncertain world (pp. 276-277); Zubok in his commentary also
agrees "emphatically" that "Stalin put Soviet state interests ahead of
desire to spread Communist ideology"; and Vojtech Mastny, _The Cold War
and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years_ (1996), a biting critique of
Stalin which contends that in the long run his insatiable quest for
security (which seems to be almost as much paranoia as ideology) would
have created Cold War conflicts but concedes that Stalin did not intend to
march his Red Army into West Europe nor impose communist regimes there.

In sum, although these works may not be in agreement on every issue they
provide significant evidence to show that Stalin-who did not want or
expect war with the Western powers in the postwar era-was bent on engaging
in hard, realistic international bargaining with the Western powers and
able to differentiate between the Soviet Union's interests in Eastern
Europe and in Germany, between issues of greater and lesser importance,
and to recognize, as he did at Potsdam, that when the "correlation of
forces" favored the U.S., it would be necessary to concede to certain U.S.
positions, e.g., zonal reparations in Germany and admission of Italy into
the United Nations in exchange for future consideration of recognition of
Eastern European governments.

Unfortunately, Mark completely misstates my view of the Marshall Plan by
claiming that I portray it as "a political catastrophe"
but-grudgingly-admit to its economic success. Certainly I have stated that
for many reasons (including fear that Congress would not appropriate funds
for a program involving the Soviet Union) the U.S. did not want or expect
Soviet acceptance and that officials drew financial and economic
requirements and maintained a negotiating posture that they knew would
achieve this result. It is also true that Kennan forewarned that would
this lead the Soviets to "clamp down completely" in Eastern Europe as a
defensive move, and that Undersecretary of State Lovett said that "the
world is definitely split in two." In sum, the price to be paid for
integrating western Germany into the Marshall Plan was effectively the
division of Germany (and Europe), and this would also lead to escalated
Cold War tactics and policies and formation of increasingly hostile
political, economic, and then military blocs.

At the same time, Mark completely ignores that I conclude my chapter on
the Marshall Plan by saying that it proved to be perhaps the Truman
administration's "most enduring and inspiring foreign policy initiative,"
that it helped to restore western European production, revive trade, and
limit inflation, that it established a framework to effect Franco-German
accord and to foster security among West Germany's neighbors, and that it
lay the foundation for a half century of political and economic stability
in West Europe.

Thus I would say that I have tried to render a balanced account of the
complex Marshall Plan, and I find it hard to comprehend how Mark could
assert that I have portrayed the Marshall Plan as a political catastrophe.

Regardless, it is time for me to call a halt to my comments. I wish to
thank Tom Maddux and H-DIPLO for affording time and space for discussion
of my book. I also wish, once again, to thank the many scholars to whom I
have expressed my gratitude in my Acknowledgments in _Another Such
Victory_, Walter Hixson for his early encouragement, and Andrew Rotter,
Carolyn Eisenberg, Mark Byrnes, and Vlad Zubok for their professional,
thoughtful, and spirited reviews. I regard their praise, their criticisms
or differing views, and their suggestions for further speculation as three
vital elements that unite us in our common quest to try to understand our
recent history so that we may, perhaps, confront our present and future
with greater wisdom as well as humility, and with respect for the history
and traditions of those with whom we or our nation disagree.

Arnold Offner
Lafayette College

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