Summer 2019 1 Policy Memo Assignment Instruction.docx

Summer 2019
1
Policy Memo Assignment Instructions (be sure to read all 7
pages)
For the final assignment you will write a brief memo,
advocating for a psychology--based policy
solution for a particular social issue. First, choose a social
issue that you think should be
addressed (if it is not currently being addressed) by the
government (federal, state, or local) or
that it should be addressed differently; and the solution(s), at
least partly, should be based on
psychological research. You can choose any issue that either
was covered or not covered in
this class, except for the suspension/expulsion issue that I
discussed in my lecture. You may
choose any of the covered course materials to support your
evidence-based solution(s). You can
also find additional scientific literature to provide support to
your claims.

Your Memo should include the following information:
1. Description of the social issue that you believe the
government needs to address
differently; and explain why the government should be
concerned with the issue.
2. Describe any governmental program(s) or law(s), if any, that
are already in place to
address the issue. If none exists, state that. Explain why more
needs to be done (e.g., is
the law/program ineffective?)
3. Discuss the complexity of the issue (please refer back to my
“wicked problems” lectures
and reading by Rittel and Webber, 1973).
4. and finally explain why a new policy based on psychological
research will be more
effective than what is currently in place (if anything). Explain
how psychological
research can shed more light on the issue and its potential
solution.
USE THE TEMPLATE BELOW TO WRITE YOUR PAPER
REFER TO THE GRADING RUBRIC FOR ADDITIONAL

HELPFUL HINTS
Summer 2019
2
Policy Memo
To: Name of the individual or government organization that
should read this memo
From: Your First and Last name
Re: [Insert Your Main Message/Proposal/or Conclusion]
___________________________________________________
Executive Summary (about one or two paragraphs)
This part of your memo should provide a clear and concise
summary of the memo (background,
analysis, and recommendations). Highlight major ideas and
draw together key points, as this

may be the only part of the memo that the reader be willing or
able to read. Make every word
count.
Background (about two or three paragraphs)
Briefly provide background information on the social issue.
The purpose of this section is to get
your reader up to speed on the issue and the policy area that
he/she may not be familiar with.
Analysis (this is the main body of your memo)
Describe the “wickedness” of the issue; and what, if anything,
has been done to solve it.
Then, discuss the psychology of the issue, and explain how
psychology can help address it. Cite
at least 5 different academic sources; at least 4 must come from
psychological literature,
published in professional journals (feel free to use the articles
discussed in this course).
You can also include additional sources of evidence that were
not covered in the class, as long as
they come from credible sources and relevant to your point.
Organize and connect the topics in such a way that together they
provide a clear, concise and

coherent assessment of the effectiveness of your proposal.
Conclusion (about one paragraph)
Summer 2019
3
Conclude your memo by giving your final thoughts on the issue
and policy solution. For more
help on how to write a policy memo, visit
http://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/policymemo
References (separate page)
Cite all your sources using APA or any familiar to you style
(but be consistent).
ADDITIONAL IMPORTANT FORMAT INSTRUCTIONS:
1 Your memo should be between 2 and 4 pages in length—
single-spaced, 12-point font (Times
New Roman) and 1-inch margins. The assignment should not be
longer than four pages
(not including the reference page). Anything past 4 pages will
not be read or graded. You

must write it in paragraph form and submit it in Microsoft Word
format. Make certain
you submit it in Microsoft Word format, either in 97-2003
format or a more recent
version (2007 or later are fine).
2 You should use in-text citations supporting your arguments, if
needed. Provide the full
citation for any sources you cited (like the textbook or some
other book or article) in
“References” page.
3 You have to use APA format or style used in your field (e.g.,
Chicago Manual) to cite things.
Whatever style you use, be consistent throughout the paper.
4 When referring to readings or other sources, put the concept
into your own words. Never use
quotes from the literature in the paper--NEVER. Quotes will
not be read and any
ideas expressed with quotes will not be counted as part of your
responses.
Grading Rubric: Your paper will be evaluated on your
knowledge and ability to synthesize the
information we have covered in this course (lectures, videos,
and readings). This entails
incorporating relevant theories and studies, debating their
merits and drawing an informed

conclusion. In addition to the substance of your paper, your
memo will be evaluated on its
organization and grammar.
http://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/policymemo
Summer 2019
4
Policy Paper Grading Scheme (50 points)
Quality of Writing (20 points)
1. Literacy (5 points):
Great (A):
Written in clear
English; no
grammatical
errors; written in

a formal and
respectful tone
Good (B) Needs Work (C) Needs Major
Revisions (D)
Your Grade
5 4.5 4 3
2. Formatting and Other Logistics (5 points):
Great (A): All
formatting
instructions
properly
followed (e.g.,
all sections
included,
citations, page
length, no quotes

Revisions (D)
Your Grade
5 4.5 4 3
3. Organization (10 points):
Great (A):
Logical
sequencing of
ideas through
well-developed
paragraphs;
transitions are
used to enhance
organization and
comprehension
Revisions (D)
Your Grade

Summer 2019
5
of ideas
(consistently
demonstrated
throughout the
paper)
10 9 8 7
Quality of Critical Thinking (30 points)
4. Background of the social issue
Great (A):
Provides
important

background
information
about the
social issue
and its current
status
(including any
existing
policies)
Good (B)
Provides
insufficient
amount of
background
information
about the social
issue.
Needs Work

(C): Some
background
information is
inaccurate
Needs Major
Revisions (D):
Insufficient and
inaccurate
background
information.
Your Score
5 4 3 2-1
5. Analysis of the social issue
Great (A):
Identifies not
only the basics

but also the
nuances of the
issue—the
issue is clearly
a “wicked
problem”.
Analyzes the
Good (B)
Describes
mostly the
basics of the
issue; nuances
are not
sufficiently
discussed—the
issue is not
sufficiently
Needs Work

(C): Provides
only the
summary of
the basics of
the issue.
Needs Major
Revisions (D):
Represents the
issue
inaccurately or
in a very
confusing
manner or
provides
insufficient
Your Score
Summer 2019

6
issue with a
clear sense of
scope.
discuss to see it
as a “wicked
problem” .
amount of
information
7 5 4 3
6. Proposal of a policy solution
Great (A):
Proposed policy
solution is
coherently
explained, and is

aligned well with
the issue.
Good (B):
Proposed policy
solution is
explained, and is
aligned with the
issue. But may
not be entirely
coherently or
sufficiently
explained.
Needs Work (C):
Proposed policy
solution is not
sufficiently
explained, or is
not aligned with

the issue.
Your Score
7 5 4-1
7. Presents sufficient amount of relevant scientific evidence to
support the arguments.
Great (A):
Presents
sufficient amount
(at least 4 of the
5 sources are of
psychological
research) of
relevant
psychological
evidence;
examines the
evidence and

source of
evidence with
precision.
Good (B):
Presents
sufficient
amount (at least
4 of the 5
sources are of
psychological
research) of
relevant
psychological
evidence;
examines the
evidence and
source of
evidence but at

times lacks
clarity
Needs Work (C):
Either presents
insufficient
amount of
literature or not
all cited literature
is of relevance or
doesn’t come
from professional
journals; or some
literature is
inaccurately
interpreted.
Needs Major
Revisions (D):

Does not present
enough evidence
or most of what is
presented is
irrelevant or
inaccurately
interpreted; or
Does not
distinguish
between fact,
opinion, and value
judgments.
Your Score
7 6 5 4-2
8. Executive Summary and Conclusion.

Summer 2019
7
Great (A):
Executive
summary and
conclusion are
aligned with the
background and
analysis sections
Good (B)
Executive
summary or
conclusion are
not entirely
aligned with the
background and

analysis sections
Needs Work (C):
Executive
summary and
conclusion are
not all well
aligned with the
background and
analysis sections
Needs Major
Revisions (D):
Important
information is
missing.
Your Score
4 3 2 1

COMMON FORMS OF PLAGIARISM:
ence(s) word for word without
quotation marks.
-uses his/her
previously written work, word for
word, and without quotation marks and/or proper citation.
es
someone’s sentence or several
sentences, changes some words but leaves the structure of the
sentence(s) still intact.
For example, here is an original quote from Inbar and Lammers
(in press), Political Diversity in
Social Personality Psychology:
“One salient explanation is a hostile political climate against
conservatives (and even
moderates). Nonliberals may feel unable to publicly express
their views, and the liberal majority
may actively discriminate against openly conservative
individuals.”
And here is an example of it being insufficiently paraphrased:
One explanation is an unfriendly political climate against
conservative views [(and even

moderates)]. Someone who is not a liberal may feel unable to
[publicly] give their opinions,
and the liberal majority will [actively] retaliate against those
[conservative] people.
If plagiarism is detected, and depending on its scope, you may
receive a 50% reduction on your
paper, get a failing grade, or be reported to the Dean’s office.
Resources used:
https://www.bowdoin.edu/studentaffairs/academic-
honesty/examples/mosaic/index.shtml
THE
JOHN O’SULLIVAN MEMORIAL LECTURE SERIES
Harry S. Truman,
the Bomb, and the
Transformation of
U.S. Foreign Policy
Wilson D. Miscamble, c.s.c.
University of Notre Dame
About the

John
O’Sullivan
Memorial Lecture
In the spring of 2004, a group of senior citizen
students at Florida Atlantic University paid
tribute to John O’Sullivan, a beloved professor
of history who died in 2000, by establishing a
Memorial Fund to support an annual lecture in
his honor.
In keeping with John’s commitment to
teaching, research, and community outreach,
the mission of the John O’Sullivan Memorial
Lectureship is to broaden and deepen public
understanding of modern U.S. history.
The Memorial Fund — which is administered
by the Department of History — sponsors
public lectures and classroom seminars by
some of the most distinguished scholars and
gifted teachers of American history. The
lectures typically focus on topics relevant
to Professor O’Sullivan’s specialties in 20th
Century U.S. history, including: World
War II, the Vietnam War, the nuclear age,
the Holocaust, peace history, political and
diplomatic affairs, and other topics.
JOHN O’SULLIVAN MEMORIAL LECTURE
Harry S. Truman,
the Bomb, and the
Transformation of

U.S. Foreign Policy
By Wilson D. Miscamble, c.s.c.
Department of History
Florida Atlantic University
2008
John O’Sullivan Memorial Lecture 1
HARRY S. TRUMAN, THE BOMB
AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF
AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
UNCERTAIN LEGACY
IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON of April 12, 1945 Franklin
Roosevelt rested in his
cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia, in the comforting presence
of his old love Lucy
Mercer Rutherford. Suddenly he looked up and said simply: "I
have a terrific

headache." He slumped forward, quickly lost consciousness and
died soon after. The
tragic news spread quickly and set off a wave of mourning
throughout the country.
The great leader of the democratic cause had died on the very
eve of military triumph
and rightly won for himself a treasured place in the hearts of his
people. Winston
Churchill described FDR's as "an enviable death" for he had
"brought his country
through the worst of its perils and the heaviest of its toils." He
led his country
successfully in war and he died precisely at the right time, as
the historian Patrick
Maney has noted, to preserve his reputation. But he left an
enormously complex,
ambiguous, and challenging inheritance to his successor, Harry
S. Truman.
My lecture today is largely devoted to exploring the
development of
Truman’s foreign policy and the significance of it. To
appreciate it well we must
have some grasp of what he inherited from FDR. Assuredly,
Truman's road ahead

was not clearly charted when he took office in April of 1945.
Franklin Roosevelt rather nebulously planned for a postwar
world in which
continued collaboration between the wartime ‘Big Four’ of the
United States, the
Soviet Union, Great Britain and China would assure an era of
peace and a prosperity
powered by free trade among nations. In his visionary scenario
Europe and
especially Germany and France would be greatly reduced in
significance in world
affairs. FDR expected the U.S. to be engaged in the world but
he couldn’t foresee
any extensive and permanent American military or political
commitments far beyond
the western hemisphere and certainly not in Europe. He thought
that Britain and the
Soviet Union could oversee European developments.
In light of his according the Soviet Union such a consequential

postwar role,
the American leader worked during the war to build a
cooperative relationship with
his Soviet opposite, Josef Stalin. Rather naively, I think we can
say in retrospect, he
relied on his hunches and intuitions and held the hope that he
could civilize or
domesticate the Soviet ‘beast’ and establish a personal
connection with Stalin.
Operating on this sad delusion Roosevelt fashioned a strategy
towards the Soviets
based on personal connections and on significant concessions
aimed at reassuring
them so as to gain their cooperation.
Rather than pursuing a hardheaded political-military strategy
that many of his
knowledgeable advisers, such as Ambassador Averell Harriman,
recommended--
especially in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising tragedy of
1944 -- Roosevelt
pursued collaboration with Stalin to the end. Filled with
idealistic hopes for the
success of a new international body, Roosevelt made
concessions to Stalin at Yalta

to secure Soviet participation in it. He believed that the United
Nations would serve
as a vehicle to prevent American disengagement from world
affairs after the war. He
feared a return of prewar isolationism so he vested the UN with
notable importance.
But doing so led him to perpetuate an unrealistic and adolescent
idealism among the
American people on postwar possibilities while at the same time
he turned a blind
eye to the Soviet establishment of their control over much of
Eastern Europe. Better
not to confront the real issues that divided the wartime allies.
Better to build the UN
on foundations of shifting sand rather than honestly face the
fundamentally different
worldviews and interests of the major powers that inevitably
dominated postwar
international politics. Franklin Roosevelt, that great conjurer
and juggler, left to his
successor rather inflated expectations and unrealistic hopes for
postwar peace that
then influenced and restricted the Truman administration’s
policymaking for almost

two years.
Now, of course Franklin Roosevelt deserves great credit for
bringing the
American ship of state through to the edge of victory in the
greatest of world
conflicts. He did so in a manner that left the United States
economically and
militarily the most powerful nation in the world. This is, as
historians Warren
Kimball and Gaddis Smith have noted, legitimate reason to pay
tribute to his
accomplishment. But with the exception of his international
economic planning he
had not effectively shaped realistic policies to guide his nation
in the postwar era.
The war had "irrevocably destroyed the [prewar] international
system" leaving some
fundamental questions: "What was to take its place? How was
the readmission of the

defeated powers to the society of nations to be regulated? How
was new aggression
to be contained? How was peace to be assured in an
ideologically torn world?" And,
what should be the role of the United States in fashioning viable
responses to these
challenges? Ultimately, Franklin Roosevelt was not called to
answer such questions.
The task fell to Harry S. Truman.
THE TRUMAN FOREIGN POLICY
Under Truman's leadership the foreign policy of the United
States underwent a major
transformation. From limited engagement and even, I would
argue, irresponsible
restraint in the affairs of the world beyond the western
hemisphere during the
nineteen-thirties, the United States assumed sweeping
international obligations
during the years of Truman's presidency. Roosevelt and
Truman together combined
to destroy American isolationism, with a major assist from the
Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor! But under Truman’s leadership the United States

moved to a level of
world engagement and assumed international commitments far
beyond anything that
Roosevelt had conceived. I will illustrate this point today
largely by focusing on
American policy towards Europe, but I trust this will suffice to
make my case.
Motivated in large part by a desire to preserve the security of
the non-
communist world from Soviet expansionism, the United States
worked to secure the
political and economic recovery of the European democracies
devastated by a brutal
war, and it joined them in forging a military alliance committed
to the defense of
Western Europe. Furthermore, the U.S. restored and
incorporated into a peacetime
alliance structure its defeated foes, Germany and Japan.
Franklin Roosevelt would

have been staggered to find American troops committed to a
military alliance in
Europe and American planes supplying the blockaded sections
of Berlin—Hitler’s
capital, no less--within four years of the end of World War II.
This didn’t match the
postwar world he had conceived and for which he planned.
But, it must be appreciated, that Harry Truman never self-
consciously
decided to transform the foreign policy content and approach
that he inherited from
FDR. Instead, external circumstances drove the creation of the
Truman
administration’s foreign policy. These circumstances, which I
shall explore at
further length, undermined the validity of the plans and
assumptions FDR had
developed.
And, it must be appreciated that the Truman administration
moved rather
slowly and in a halting manner away from the Roosevelt’s
guiding assumptions on
cooperation with the Soviet Union and on the importance of the
U.N. There was

NO sudden reversal of policies. When Truman came to office
he had neither the
interest nor the desire to alter Roosevelt’s policies. He
sincerely wanted to
implement the plans of his revered predecessor and to assure
continuity in policy.
His basic foreign policy assumptions placed him in the
intellectual lineage of FDR.
His recognition of the shameful and disastrous consequences of
appeasement
diplomacy and neutrality in the 1930s led him to fear any return
to American
isolationism. Like FDR, he wanted the U.S. to engage the
world, but in a limited
way. Similarly, he held great faith in the benefits of the new
international
organization which Roosevelt sponsored and which he had
vigorously supported and
promoted as a senator. He certainly hoped to continue
cooperative relations with the
wartime allies in securing final victory over Hitler and the
Japanese militarists and in
building a peaceful postwar world.

The modest tensions evident in Truman’s early dealings with
Soviet foreign
minister Molotov in late April of 1945 should be understood as
part of his effort to
secure the implementation of agreements which Roosevelt had
negotiated at Yalta
and thus to facilitate a successful meeting in San Francisco to
form the United
Nations. The dramatic character and political significance of
the often-noted
Truman-Molotov clash of April 23 where Molotov supposedly
heard “Missouri
mule-driver’s language” has been vastly exaggerated. [This is
the meeting where
Molotov supposedly said: “I’ve never been spoken to like that
before” to which
Truman claimed he replied: “Carry out your agreements and you
won’t be spoken to
like that again.” I think that exchange was a later Truman
embellishment.]

Whatever the case may be, the encounter was a mere tactic used
in an unsuccessful
effort to make progress on the issue of gaining some kind of
representative Polish
government. This issue threatened to disrupt the all-important
San Francisco
negotiations to establish the UN. Those who focus on this
episode miss the forest
while fixating on a single tree.
The broad sweep of American policy from April 1945 to the
Potsdam
conference in July of 1945 consisted of a genuine effort to
maintain cooperative
relations with the Soviet Union. Guided by a former
ambassador to Moscow and
renowned Soviet sympathizer Joseph Davies, Truman aimed to
be even-handed in
his dealings with Churchill’s Britain and Stalin’s Russia and to
avoid any hint of
Anglo-American collusion against the Soviet Union. Truman’s
dispatch of FDR’s
closest associate, Harry Hopkins, to Moscow in May of 1945
and his significant

concessions on Poland and on withdrawing American troops
back out of the assigned
Soviet zone in Germany testify to his continuity with Franklin
Roosevelt. Just like
FDR Truman proved overly concerned about the establishment
of the United Nations
and in like manner to the man he succeeded he squandered
negotiating power with
the Soviet Union to secure their participation in it. Regrettably,
naiveté with regard
to Stalin and his intentions hardly ended with Roosevelt’s
death. The alteration of
FDR’s conciliatory approach came after only further attempts at
cooperation.
Truman’s appointment of James F. Byrnes as secretary of state
in July 1945
brought a somewhat different approach to the Truman
administration. Byrnes was
an experienced domestic politician who had served as the
Democratic majority
leader in the Senate in the 1930s and a man who had hoped to
be FDR’s running
mate in 1944. His biographer (David Robertson) rightly titled
his book-Sly and Able.

Byrnes, with Truman’s backing, favored the traditional
diplomatic tactic of
negotiation. He held none of Roosevelt’s illusions regarding
his abilities to gain
Stalin’s trust. Nonetheless, he still wanted to maintain decent
relations with the
Soviet Union by reaching practical settlements of the issues
they faced. In light of
this Byrnes largely recognized the division of Europe implicitly
foreshadowed at the
Yalta Conference and secured through Soviet military
domination of Eastern Europe.
He pursued more of a quid pro quo approach and accepted a
spheres of influence
peace hoping that this might secure a workable and stable
postwar settlement. The
Americans hoped for a ‘soft’ Soviet sphere—what we would
later think of as a
‘Finlandized’ Eastern Europe.

This was essentially the approach that Byrnes and Truman
pursued at the
Potsdam Conference in July of 1945. At this conference it also
should be noted
Truman received confirmation from Stalin that he would enter
the war against the
Japanese. And it was while at this conference that Truman
learned of the successful
explosion of the first atomic bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico
on July 16th, 1945.
The relationship of the atomic bomb to American diplomacy
towards the
Soviets and in the postwar world has been a matter of great
contention among
historians. It is clearly a very emotionally charged subject. I
want to address some
aspects of the matter here as they concern Truman and his broad
foreign policy
making intentions.
TRUMAN AND THE A-BOMBS
It is sometimes difficult for critics of the use of the atomic
bombs to accept, but
Truman raised no serious concerns regarding whether the atomic
bomb was a

legitimate weapon of war. Nor did he raise any questions about
the plans to use
atomic bombs against the Japanese. On the atomic bomb
matter he acted as a sort of
“chairman of the board” who validated and confirmed
recommendations that came
up to him from subordinates. He had stepped into FDR’s shoes
and also into his
assumptions that the weapon should be used to secure victory in
the war.
Furthermore, his approval of the use of the atomic bomb
reflected the Rooseveltian
preference to “achieve complete victory at the lowest cost in
American lives.” The
A-bomb proved yet another arrow in the impressive quiver of
America’s “industrial
might and technological prowess” which allowed U.S. casualties
to be kept so light
relative to the losses of other major participants in the war.

Samuel Walker correctly
noted that “Truman inherited from Roosevelt the strategy of
keeping American
losses to a minimum, and he was committed to carrying it out
for the remainder of
the war.” I suspect it is the strategy that any American president
would have pursued.
Ask yourself what you would have done if you walked in
Truman’s shoes.
Notably, no action of the Japanese government or military
encouraged
Truman to consider any change in strategy. Quite the opposite!
Having broken the
Japanese codes the Americans knew of the tentative, back-
channel efforts of certain
civilian officials in Tokyo to enlist the Soviet Union in
negotiating some kind of
peace settlement that would not require either surrender or any
occupation of the
home islands. But such terms were completely unacceptable to
the allies. The
American-led alliance intended “unrestricted occupation of
Japanese territory, total
authority in the governing of Japan, dismantlement of Japan’s

military and military-
industrial complex (“demobilization”), a restructuring of
Japanese society
(“demilitarization”), and Allied-run war crimes trials.” Japan
would need to concede
fully as had Germany. No indication of such a surrender
occurred, of course,
because the influential Japanese decision-makers could not
countenance it.
So, the Americans waited in vain for the Japanese to respond to
their
Potsdam Declaration’s call for immediate and unconditional
surrender. Japan’s
Prime Minister Suzuki Kantaro publicly dismissed the Potsdam
terms on July 28 and
on July 30. Privately, when referring to the terms, he confided
to a senior cabinet
official that “for the enemy to say something like that means
circumstances have
arisen that force them also to end the war. That is why they are
talking about
unconditional surrender. Precisely at a time like this, if we
hold firm, then they will
yield before we do.” He did not “think there is any need to stop

[the war.]”
In the post-Potsdam period the Tokyo government held back
from any
official contact with the Allies through the formal channels
provided by the Swiss
government. Despite the thunderous bombing campaign of
General Curtis LeMay’s
B-29s from March to August 1945 that had left no sizable city
untouched, the
Japanese planned to continue their war effort. Indeed, members
of the Japanese
military appeared to relish the opportunity to punish American
invaders who dared
intrude on their home islands. Late in July American
intelligence utilizing the Ultra
code-breaking system determined that the Japanese troop levels
in Kyushu dedicated
to repelling any invasion had now reached six divisions and
more soldiers were

arriving. General MacArthur’s intelligence chief, Major
General Charles
Willoughby, even expressed the fear that Japanese forces could
“grow to [the] point
where we attack on a ratio of one (1) to one (1),” which, he
helpfully added for even
the most obtuse of his readers, “is not the recipe for victory.”
The prospects for the
invasion, code-named Olympic, now appeared decidedly
problematic and the
likelihood of very heavy American casualties commensurately
increased. In such
circumstances none of the American military leaders either in
the Pacific theater or
in Washington cautioned Truman to reconsider his use of the
atomic bomb. The on-
the-ground reality of a Japanese military “girding for
Armageddon” and convinced
“that it could achieve success against an invasion,” must be well
appreciated by all
who genuinely seek to understand why the atomic bombs were
used. In short, Japan
hardly stood on the verge of surrender.
Eager to force Japan’s defeat before paying any invasion’s high

cost in
American blood, Truman simply allowed the pre-determined
policy to proceed.
While numerous concerned commentators writing from a post-
Hiroshima
perspective have sought to supply all kinds of alternatives to the
A-bomb for the
American president’s use, he operated in a pre-Hiroshima
world. Truman and his
associates like Byrnes and Secretary of War Henry Stimson
didn’t seek to avoid
using the bomb and those who focus on “alternatives” distort
history by
overemphasizing them. As Barton Bernstein of Stanford
University persuasively has
clarified, the American leaders “easily rejected or never
considered most of the so-
called alternatives to the bomb.” They saw no reason to do so
because they viewed
the atomic bomb as another weapon in the Allied arsenal along
with such
complements-not alternatives-as the naval blockade, continued
conventional
bombing, the threat of invasion and Soviet entry into the war.

Together, they hoped,
these might secure a Japanese surrender before American troops
waded ashore on the
southern plains of Kyushu. Forcing a Japanese surrender
formed the prism through
which Truman viewed both the use of the atomic bombs and the
Soviet Union’s
decision to enter the war.
Now it is clear that Secretary of State Byrnes hoped that
America’s
possession of the atomic bomb might add some weight to his
side in the diplomatic
bargaining during the post-Potsdam period but—and this must
be clearly
understood—Truman authorized the actual use of the atomic
bomb to defeat the
Japanese and not as part of some anti-Soviet strategy. Fanciful
notions of “atomic
diplomacy” must be consigned to the historiographical dustbin.

Most striking about
America’s sole possession of the atomic bomb is how little they
sought to use it for
diplomatic ends and purposes in the immediate postwar period.
TRANSITION & TRANSFORMATION
The period from the fall of 1945 until the late fall of 1946
constitutes a period of
transition. Perceptions of the Soviet Union changed and
concerns about its
international behavior and ambitions deepened especially as
regards Iran and Turkey
that were subjected to Soviet pressures. And yet, while various
general alarms were
raised by the likes of Winston Churchill in his famous “Iron
Curtain Address” in
Fulton Missouri in March 1946, and by the diplomat George
Kennan, in his so-called
“Long Telegram” from Moscow in February of 1946, the
American response
remained rather episodic. No coherent response emerged and,
much to the distress
of the courageous British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and
like-minded

Europeans, the United States initially demonstrated no
eagerness to step into the
breach to balance and to counter Soviet influence on the
continent.
But in the end Truman, initially guided by Byrnes and then by
Secretaries of
State George C. Marshall and Dean G. Acheson, broke free of
FDR’s ‘hunches’
regarding Stalin. These Americans were less enamored of their
own intuition and
more willing to draw conclusions from Soviet actions and
intentions. They
increasingly accepted that U.S. policy must resist Soviet
demands and create barriers
of sorts to their offensive operations. Byrnes applied the
approach in Germany with
his Stuttgart proposals for German economic rehabilitation and
began to clarify that
the U.S. would not abandon Europe. With the Truman Doctrine
and the Marshall

Plan in 1947 the United States finally put to rest Rooseveltian
notions that Europe’s
significance could be reduced and worked instead with a proper
understanding of the
old continent’s true importance in the global balance of power.
With those measures
came the essential confirmation that the Truman administration
had finally
abandoned its hopes for cooperation with the Soviet Union and
begun to contain
Stalin’s expansion. Policy shifted from reliance on Roosevelt’s
assumptions to the
construction of the Truman paradigm that proved so valuable
throughout the cold
war.
A new conceptual worldview of America's international role
surely was
framed during Truman's tenure as president. When the
Missourian consigned his
office to Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 20, 1953, the United
States stood
unmistakably as a global power with global interests committed
to playing a central

and abiding role in international affairs.
Now, please appreciate that no well-developed, strategic
analysis guided the
process of transformation in its initial years. While a
significant amount of strategic
military planning took place within the defense establishment,
the major elements of
Truman’s foreign policy up to 1950 did not emerge from a
“process by which ends
are related to means, intentions to capabilities, objectives to
resources.” American
policy emerged in a much more haphazard manner. Of course,
this is not to deny
the influence on strategy of specific individuals. John Lewis
Gaddis of Yale has
emphasized rightly the importance of George Kennan’s general
notion of
containment in clarifying for policymakers that their options
need not be drawn from
“bipolar extremes: war or peace, victory or defeat, neither
appeasement nor
annihilation.” But the Truman administration policymakers
never read from one
coherent script, nor did they march to the beat of a single

drummer. They disagreed
on matters of both policy formulation and implementation and
worked their way
towards a coherent approach.
Dean Acheson captured something of the mentality of the
American
policymakers when he recalled in his memoir that “only slowly
did it dawn upon us
that the whole world structure and order that we had inherited
from the nineteenth
century was gone and that the struggle to replace it would be
directed from two
bitterly opposed and ideologically irreconcilable power
centers.” Beginning in 1947
the Americans finally recognized with some clarity that the
“hoped-for new order” of
FDR’s and Cordell Hull’s soothing, wartime assurances was “an
illusion.” The
American recognition resulted in large part from the forced

prompting of the great
‘balancing’ power of the nineteenth and early twentieth
century’s -the exhausted
Great Britain-which could no longer play its stabilizing role in
international affairs.
The Britain of late 1946 and early 1947 possessed but a shadow
of its former
greatness. The British scholar David Reynolds has described it
as being “in a
desperate predicament.” Reynolds explained further that “the
growing confrontation
with Russia, at a time of limited US help, necessitated military
and political
commitments that the economy, struggling with a huge post-war
balance of
payments deficit, could not sustain.” Facing major difficulties
on the domestic front
as well as in both Palestine and India, the British cabinet
decided in late February
1947 that it must reduce its financial and military commitments.
It determined to
hold to an earlier decision and to end British aid to Greece as of
March 31. The
British so advised the Americans and set off a flurry of activity

to determine an
American response to this new circumstance. Thus it was a
British action, rather
than any positive initiative of an American official, that forced
the Truman
administration to begin moving seriously beyond the confusion
and contradictions
that had at times characterized its policymaking during 1946.
In March 1947 the United States framed a program of limited
military and
economic assistance ($400 million) to assist the Greeks and also
the Turks, another
action that would have surprised Franklin Roosevelt, who had
resisted Churchill’s
wartime efforts to draw the U.S. into commitments in the
eastern Mediterranean and
southeastern Europe. Primarily in order to pry funds from a
parsimonious Congress
Truman cast his appeal in grandly Universalist terms portraying
the issue as a
conflict between totalitarian repression and democratic freedom.
Thus was born the
Truman Doctrine with its promise “to support free peoples who
are resisting

attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside
pressures.” Despite this exalted
rhetoric the Truman administration, in reality, had no overall
plan to respond to the
Soviet Union. The aid to Greece and Turkey constituted but a
first and restrained
element of such a response. Much else was yet to be formulated.
This point has not always been well understood by some
historians who
describe the Truman Doctrine as virtually a prescriptive tract
for global containment.
But neither the Truman Doctrine nor George Kennan’s
celebrated article “The
Sources of Soviet Conduct,” which appeared in the July 1947
issue of Foreign
Affairs and which called for “long-term, patient but firm and
vigilant containment of
Russian expansive tendencies,” represented a real prescription
for policy. Neither

outlined in any detail what the United States should do nor
charted any explicit
course of action. It must be emphasized and understood that
only in a gradual
manner did the Truman administration decide upon the major
elements of the
American response to the Soviet Union. This is made most clear
by tracking the
outlook of the new secretary of state.
By the time that Truman delivered his famous Truman
Doctrine speech to
Congress General Marshall already had left for a Council of
Foreign Ministers
meeting in Moscow. There he still sought to make progress on
the reparations issue
and German issues more generally in negotiations that extended
for almost a month.
If anything, Marshall proved more willing to engage in genuine
negotiations than his
predecessor might have by this stage. The decision to extend
aid to Greece and
Turkey had not diverted him from an effort to settle issues with
the Soviet Union.

Guided by Byrnes’s key aide, Ben Cohen, the department’s
counselor, and
influenced by the advice of the American Military Governor in
Germany, Lucius
Clay, Marshall offered real concessions on reparations in return
for Soviet
cooperation on treating Germany as one economic unit. He
made no progress
whatsoever. The obstinacy of Stalin and Molotov troubled
Marshall and he drew
key conclusions from the failure of the Moscow meeting
regarding both Soviet
intentions and the requisite American response.
From his first-hand experience the new secretary of state
perceived that the
Soviet Union was not content to consolidate its East European
empire but hoped to
take advantage of the social dislocation and economic
desperation of Western
Europe. “At the conclusion of the Moscow Conference,”
Marshall recalled, “it was

my feeling that the Soviets were doing everything possible to
achieve a complete
breakdown in Europe.” As he astutely saw it, “the major
problem was to counter this
negative Soviet policy and to restore the European economy.”
Marshall began this
effort on his return to Washington and under his guidance the
state department seized
the initiative and engaged in a remarkably creative period of
foreign policy
development. Truman, in sharp contrast to FDR, proved only
too willing to let
Marshall’s state department make the running, and it rather than
the White House
emerged as the principal source of policy.
The core group of state department policymakers shared
Marshall’s fear that
Western Europe’s deep economic problems, when combined
with its political
weakness and its psychological exhaustion, not only would
redound to the benefit of
local communists—especially in France and Italy—but also

leave it vulnerable to
exploitation and intimidation by the Soviet Union. Such fears,
along with a genuine
humanitarian concern for the European populace, drove the
United States to generate
a program for European economic recovery. Developed in
conjunction with the
Europeans led by Ernest Bevin, this program, known as the
Marshall Plan,
eventually provided $13 billion in economic assistance to aid in
the reconstruction
and rejuvenation of Western Europe. Furthermore, it prodded
the Europeans towards
greater economic cooperation and integration, and it concretely
revealed the
American commitment to this area that now was deemed vital to
American interests
and national security.
The Marshall Plan was the decisive step in establishing a
political balance in
postwar Europe. Fortunately, and at last, the Truman
administration conclusively
determined that Europe mattered and that its significance in
world affairs could not

be easily diminished in the manner which FDR had wished. The
aid program
confirmed the long-term American commitment to the continent
and it stymied the
Soviet strategic objective of a weak and fragmented Europe. It
also provoked a more
intense response from Stalin, who presumably considered a
politically and
economically healthy Western Europe a threat to his ambitions
and security. In
September of 1947 the Soviets and eight other European
communist parties,
including the large French and Italian parties, established the
Cominform—an
organization devised by Moscow to control local communist
parties—and embarked
on a campaign of political warfare. Furthermore, Stalin now
discarded any pretense
of political tolerance in Eastern Europe. Bevin, Marshall and

their colleagues had
risen to meet his ‘cautious and deceptive’ efforts to advance
‘socialism’ through the
so-called national front strategy. So blocked, Stalin ordered the
establishment of
one-party, totalitarian regimes throughout the region where the
Red Army held sway,
utilizing the savage techniques of arrests, persecution, purges
and liquidations.
Surprisingly, a rather peculiar view still exists that the Marshall
Plan aimed primarily
to challenge the Soviet Union and to contest its hold of eastern
Europe, thus forcing
Stalin’s heavy-handed response and bringing on the division of
Europe. The naiveté
of this stance and the benign portrayal it offers of Stalin and his
supposed desire for
continued cooperation with the West is hard to match yet very
easy to dismiss.
The toppling of the Czech president Eduard Benes by the
communist
Klement Gottwald in February 1948 gave a stunning
confirmation of Stalin’s
intentions and deepened the fears of West Europeans who

viewed it as a precedent
that might be followed in cases like Italy. The Prague Coup and
the tragic
communization of all of Eastern Europe, however, drew forth a
courageous response
from the West Europeans. Again the indomitable Bevin [You
might detect that I
am rather fond of him!] took the initiative and under his
guidance the British signed
a multilateral defense pact with the French and the Benelux
countries—the Treaty of
Brussels—in March of 1948. This created the Western Union
and indicated a West
European collaboration to guard against any future German
aggression as well as a
refusal to succumb to Soviet intimidation. But Bevin
recognized from the outset that
he would need to draw the United States into a defensive
alliance for it to be truly
viable and he worked towards this end throughout 1948. His
endeavors would reach
fruition in 1949.
During 1948 the evolving contest between the Soviet Union and
the western

powers in Europe culminated in a struggle over Germany. The
failure of the four-
power negotiations at the Moscow CFM in 1947 induced a
major redirection in
western policy. Impelled by a desire to develop the western
portion of Germany as a
contributor to European economic recovery as well as by a need
to lower their own
occupation costs, the United States and Britain persuaded the
French to join them in
agreements, known as the London Program, which proposed the
creation of a West
German government and state. The Soviet Union vehemently
opposed this program
and aimed to prevent its implementation. To block the London
Program’s initial
step—the introduction of a separate currency for West
Germany—and in an attempt
to force the western powers to accept a German settlement more

to their liking, the
Soviets instituted a blockade of the western sectors of Berlin
that lay wholly within
their zone of occupation. The Americans and the British
responded imaginatively to
this restriction on surface traffic into Berlin with a dramatic
airlift of supplies to the
besieged city which they maintained until the Soviets lifted the
blockade in May of
1949. Stalin’s risky gambit, intended to inflict a political
defeat on the western
powers and to disrupt their plans for West European economic
cooperation, failed
disastrously. Ironically the Soviet maneuver revealed the
limits of Stalin’s statecraft
for it drew forth an even stronger American commitment to
Western Europe.
The pressure of events like the Prague coup and the Berlin
blockade, along
with the requests of the British, prompted the Truman
administration to consider
participation in a mutual defense treaty with Western Europe.
Secret negotiations in
1948 devised the basic framework of a treaty but the American

government marked
time while waiting the result of the 1948 presidential election
and the expected
change to a Republican administration. When Truman, as
always a tough and
resilient political campaigner, surprisingly retained office he
appointed Dean
Acheson to succeed General Marshall and the new secretary of
state energetically
proceeded with negotiations to conclude an Atlantic security
pact. The North
Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington, D.C. on April 4,
1949 by the United
States, Canada and ten European countries. Article 5 of the
treaty lay at its heart and
provided that “an armed attack against one or more [of the
signatories] shall be
considered an armed attack against them all.” The U.S. Senate
ratified the treaty with
strong bipartisan support and it formed a cornerstone of postwar
American foreign
policy. Ultimately, fears of Soviet exploitation of Western
Europe’s weakness drove
the United States under Harry Truman to reverse its long

practice of refusing to
participate in peacetime alliances outside the western
hemisphere. A certain ironic
quality attaches to the fact that this compelling expansion of
American international
commitments took place on the White House watch of a one-
time Missouri farmer
when his cosmopolitan predecessor never contemplated it.
Of course at its outset the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO),
formed to give substance to the treaty guarantee, possessed
little in the way of
military force. Until 1950 it meant little more than a political
commitment of
support backed by a vague threat of nuclear retaliation. After
1950 some
conventional military muscle was added to the skeletal NATO
structure.
Nonetheless, it served as a caution and a deterrent to the Soviets

and its most crucial
immediate benefit lay in the reassurance it provided the citizens
of Western Europe.
In the end the principal benefit of NATO lay in its facilitation
of European political
stability and economic development. Behind the American
defensive guarantee
Western Europe subsequently enjoyed a remarkable period of
both.
These great foreign policy achievements of the Truman
administration
emerged from this willingness to cooperate with the West
Europeans. Truman and
his policymakers moved beyond what Acheson termed the false
“postulates” of
wartime planning to fashion a new approach which brought the
United States to the
very heart of European affairs. Regardless of subsequent policy
failures and missed
opportunities, certain grandeur characterizes the extraordinary
American effort
framed during the Truman presidency. It endured for over forty
years and provided
the umbrella under which the West Europeans enjoyed

unprecedented prosperity and
experienced real security not only from the Soviet Union but
also from the fratricide
which colors so much of their past and which made ‘civilized’
Europe, in Tony
Judt’s apt description, “the killing field of the 20th century.”
Friends, I am sure you would all want me to continue further
and to explore
further dimensions of Truman’s foreign policy -- especially his
endeavors in East
Asia and the impact of the Korean War on his decision making.
But if I were to do
that I would leave you with few reasons to buy my book which
(as Ken mentioned)
is on sale and which I would be delighted to sign for you.
Let me simply add that Truman’s presidency encompassed an
enormously
formative period in American diplomacy. Who would dispute
Dean Acheson’s

finely understated observation that “the postwar years were a
period of creation”?
Whatever the limitations and mistakes of Truman’s foreign
policy they pale in
comparison with its genuine accomplishments. On the essential
matters Truman got
it right. The American commitment to restore and secure
Western Europe and to
pursue stability in East Asia and to contest Soviet expansion
laid impressive
foundations for four decades of American foreign policy.
Truman’s successors with
various calibrations and changes in emphasis continued the
broad political-military
approach established by the Truman administration from 1947
onwards.
Despite an uncertain start during which the American
policymakers worked their
way beyond Rooseveltian assumptions, the Truman
administration eventually
grasped the essential world realities and assumed the demanding
responsibilities of
genuine international leadership. In circumstances of both
uncertainty and even

crisis it constructed a foreign policy whose main elements
proved thoroughly apt and
lasting. FDR established the foundations by developing
American economic and
military power, but it was his successor’s administration which
built the enduring
framework for postwar American foreign policy. You may not
agree with my
endorsement of the course that the Truman administration
charted, but I trust you
will acknowledge that it accomplished a lasting transformation
of American foreign
policy.
About
John
O’Sullivan
John O’Sullivan was a gifted teacher and
scholar who devoted his entire academic career
to Florida Atlantic University. He came to FAU
in 1971 after receiving his Ph.D. from Columbia
University. Since then he touched the lives of
hundreds of FAU students with his brilliant
and inspired teaching. An accomplished
scholar, his publications included The Draft

and Its Enemies (1974), From Volunteerism to
Conscription: Congress and the Selective Service,
1940-1945 (1982), American Economic History
(1989), and We Have Just Begun Not to Fight: An
Oral History of Conscientious Objectors in Civilian
Public Service during World War II (co-authored
with Heather Frazer, 1996). Before his death
in 2000, John was working on a book project
related to Medal of Honor recipients and
another book project with Patricia Kollander,
also an FAU faculty member, on a World War
II veteran. That book was published in 2005:
I Must Be a Part of This War: One Man’s Fight
against Hitler and Nazism.
John O’Sullivan
Memorial Lectures
Supporting the Lectureship
This lecture series is generously supported by donations from
members of the
community. If you wish to make a contribution, please contact
Laurie Carney
at 561.297.3606, or Kenneth Osgood, director of the History
Symposium Series
at 561.297.2816.
Blind Spot: The Secret History of
U.S. Counterterrorism
by Timothy Naftali
Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library
Religion and Politics: An American Tradition
by David Goldfield

University of North Carolina at Charlotte
The Nazis and Dixie: African Americans,
Jewish Americans, and Fascism, 1933-1939
by Glenda Gilmore
Yale University
Revisiting the Jazz Age
by Nancy F. Cott
Harvard University
Harry S. Truman, The Bomb, and the
Transformation of U.S. Foreign Policy
by Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C.
2004:
2005:
2006:
2007:
2008:
http://www.historyguide.org/europe/kennan.html
George Kennan, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct"
(1947)

The single document that best illustrated American anti-
communism and general
suspicion of Soviet aspirations, was George Kennan's famous
Long Telegram of 1946.
The Long Telegram was perhaps the most cited and most
influential statement of the
early years of the Cold War.
George Kennan had been a American diplomat on the Soviet
front, beginning his
career as an observer of the aftermath of the Russian Civil War.
He witnessed
collectivization and the terror from close range and sent his
telegram after another two
years' service in Moscow from 1944 to 1946 as chief of mission
and Ambassador
Averell Harriman's consultant. In 1946, Kennan was 44 years
old, fluent in the Russian
language and its affairs, and decidedly anti-communist.
The essence of Kennan's telegram was published in Foreign
Affairs in 1947 as The
Sources of Soviet Conduct and circulated everywhere. The
article was signed by "X"
although everyone in the know knew that authorship was
Kennan's. For Kennan, the
Cold War gave the United States its historic opportunity to
assume leadership of what
would eventually be described as the "free world."
* * * * *
THE SOURCES OF SOVIET CONDUCT
By X

Part I
The political personality of Soviet power as we know it today is
the product of
ideology and circumstances: ideology inherited by the present
Soviet leaders from the
movement in which they had their political origin, and
circumstances of the power
which they now have exercised for nearly three decades in
Russia. There can be few
tasks of psychological analysis more difficult than to try to
trace the interaction of
these two forces and the relative role of each in the
determination of official Soviet
conduct. yet the attempt must be made if that conduct is to be
understood and
effectively countered.
It is difficult to summarize the set of ideological concepts with
which the Soviet
leaders came into power. Marxian ideology, in its Russian-
Communist projection, has
http://www.historyguide.org/europe/kennan.html
always been in process of subtle evolution. The materials on
which it bases itself are
extensive and complex. But the outstanding features of
Communist thought as it
existed in 1916 may perhaps be summarized as follows: (a) that
the central factor in
the life of man, the factor which determines the character of
public life and the
"physiognomy of society," is the system by which material
goods are produced and

exchanged; (b) that the capitalist system of production is a
nefarious one which
inevitable leads to the exploitation of the working class by the
capital-owning class and
is incapable of developing adequately the economic resources of
society or of
distributing fairly the material good produced by human labor;
(c) that capitalism
contains the seeds of its own destruction and must, in view of
the inability of the
capital-owning class to adjust itself to economic change, result
eventually and
inescapably in a revolutionary transfer of power to the working
class; and (d) that
imperialism, the final phase of capitalism, leads directly to war
and revolution.
The rest may be outlined in Lenin's own words: "Unevenness of
economic and political
development is the inflexible law of capitalism. It follows from
this that the victory of
Socialism may come originally in a few capitalist countries or
even in a single
capitalist country. The victorious proletariat of that country,
having expropriated the
capitalists and having organized Socialist production at home,
would rise against the
remaining capitalist world, drawing to itself in the process the
oppressed classes of
other countries." It must be noted that there was no assumption
that capitalism would
perish without proletarian revolution. A final push was needed
from a revolutionary
proletariat movement in order to tip over the tottering structure.
But it was regarded as
inevitable that sooner of later that push be given.

For 50 years prior to the outbreak of the Revolution, this pattern
of thought had
exercised great fascination for the members of the Russian
revolutionary movement.
Frustrated, discontented, hopeless of finding self-expression --
or too impatient to seek
it -- in the confining limits of the Tsarist political system, yet
lacking wide popular
support or their choice of bloody revolution as a means of social
betterment, these
revolutionists found in Marxist theory a highly convenient
rationalization for their own
instinctive desires. It afforded pseudo-scientific justification for
their impatience, for
their categoric denial of all value in the Tsarist system, for their
yearning for power
and revenge and for their inclination to cut corners in the
pursuit of it. It is therefore no
wonder that they had come to believe implicitly in the truth and
soundness of the
Marxist-Leninist teachings, so congenial to their own impulses
and emotions. Their
sincerity need not be impugned. This is a phenomenon as old as
human nature itself. It
is has never been more aptly described than by Edward Gibbon,
who wrote in The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: "From enthusiasm to
imposture the step is
perilous and slippery; the demon of Socrates affords a
memorable instance of how a
wise man may deceive himself, how a good man may deceive
others, how the
conscience may slumber in a mixed and middle state between
self-illusion and
voluntary fraud." And it was with this set of conceptions that

the members of the
Bolshevik Party entered into power.
Now it must be noted that through all the years of preparation
for revolution, the
attention of these men, as indeed of Marx himself, had been
centered less on the future
form which Socialism would take than on the necessary
overthrow of rival power
which, in their view, had to precede the introduction of
Socialism. Their views,
therefore, on the positive program to be put into effect, once
power was attained, were
for the most part nebulous, visionary and impractical. beyond
the nationalization of
industry and the expropriation of large private capital holdings
there was no agreed
program. The treatment of the peasantry, which, according to
the Marxist formulation
was not of the proletariat, had always been a vague spot in the
pattern of Communist
thought: and it remained an object of controversy and
vacillation for the first ten years
of Communist power.
The circumstances of the immediate post-revolution period --
the existence in Russia
of civil war and foreign intervention, together with the obvious
fact that the
Communists represented only a tiny minority of the Russian
people -- made the
establishment of dictatorial power a necessity. The experiment
with war Communism"

and the abrupt attempt to eliminate private production and trade
had unfortunate
economic consequences and caused further bitterness against
the new revolutionary
regime. While the temporary relaxation of the effort to
communize Russia, represented
by the New Economic Policy, alleviated some of this economic
distress and thereby
served its purpose, it also made it evident that the "capitalistic
sector of society" was
still prepared to profit at once from any relaxation of
governmental pressure, and
would, if permitted to continue to exist, always constitute a
powerful opposing element
to the Soviet regime and a serious rival for influence in the
country. Somewhat the
same situation prevailed with respect to the individual peasant
who, in his own small
way, was also a private producer.
Lenin, had he lived, might have proved a great enough man to
reconcile these
conflicting forces to the ultimate benefit of Russian society,
thought this is
questionable. But be that as it may, Stalin, and those whom he
led in the struggle for
succession to Lenin's position of leadership, were not the men
to tolerate rival political
forces in the sphere of power which they coveted. Their sense
of insecurity was too
great. Their particular brand of fanaticism, unmodified by any
of the Anglo-Saxon
traditions of compromise, was too fierce and too jealous to
envisage any permanent
sharing of power. From the Russian-Asiatic world out of which
they had emerged they

carried with them a skepticism as to the possibilities of
permanent and peaceful
coexistence of rival forces. Easily persuaded of their own
doctrinaire "rightness," they
insisted on the submission or destruction of all competing
power. Outside the
Communist Party, Russian society was to have no rigidity.
There were to be no forms
of collective human activity or association which would not be
dominated by the Party.
No other force in Russian society was to be permitted to achieve
vitality or integrity.
Only the Party was to have structure. All else was to be an
amorphous mass.
And within the Party the same principle was to apply. The mass
of Party members
might go through the motions of election, deliberation, decision
and action; but in
these motions they were to be animated not by their own
individual wills but by the
awesome breath of the Party leadership and the overbrooding
presence of "the word."
Let it be stressed again that subjectively these men probably did
not seek absolutism
for its own sake. They doubtless believed -- and found it easy to
believe -- that they
alone knew what was good for society and that they would
accomplish that good once
their power was secure and unchallengeable. But in seeking that
security of their own
rule they were prepared to recognize no restrictions, either of

God or man, on the
character of their methods. And until such time as that security
might be achieved, they
placed far down on their scale of operational priorities the
comforts and happiness of
the peoples entrusted to their care.
Now the outstanding circumstance concerning the Soviet regime
is that down to the
present day this process of political consolidation has never
been completed and the
men in the Kremlin have continued to be predominantly
absorbed with the struggle to
secure and make absolute the power which they seized in
November 1917. They have
endeavored to secure it primarily against forces at home, within
Soviet society itself.
But they have also endeavored to secure it against the outside
world. For ideology, as
we have seen, taught them that the outside world was hostile
and that it was their duty
eventually to overthrow the political forces beyond their
borders. Then powerful hands
of Russian history and tradition reached up to sustain them in
this feeling. Finally, their
own aggressive intransigence with respect to the outside world
began to find its own
reaction; and they were soon forced, to use another
Gibbonesque phrase, "to chastise
the contumacy" which they themselves had provoked. It is an
undeniable privilege of
every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is
his enemy; for if he
reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of
his conduct he is bound
eventually to be right.

Now it lies in the nature of the mental world of the Soviet
leaders, as well as in the
character of their ideology, that no opposition to them can be
officially recognized as
having any merit or justification whatsoever. Such opposition
can flow, in theory, only
from the hostile and incorrigible forces of dying capitalism. As
long as remnants of
capitalism were officially recognized as existing in Russia, it
was possible to place on
them, as an internal element, part of the blame for the
maintenance of a dictatorial
form of society. But as these remnants were liquidated, little by
little, this justification
fell away, and when it was indicated officially that they had
been finally destroyed, it
disappeared altogether. And this fact created one of the most
basic of the compulsions
which came to act upon the Soviet regime: since capitalism no
longer existed in Russia
and since it could not be admitted that there could be serious or
widespread opposition
to the Kremlin springing spontaneously from the liberated
masses under its authority, it
became necessary to justify the retention of the dictatorship by
stressing the menace of
capitalism abroad.
This began at an early date. In 1924 Stalin specifically defended
the retention of the
"organs of suppression," meaning, among others, the army and
the secret police, on the
ground that "as long as there is a capitalistic encirclement there
will be danger of
intervention with all the consequences that flow from that

danger." In accordance with
that theory, and from that time on, all internal opposition forces
in Russia have
consistently been portrayed as the agents of foreign forces of
reaction antagonistic to
Soviet power.
By the same token, tremendous emphasis has been placed on the
original Communist
thesis of a basic antagonism between the capitalist and Socialist
worlds. It is clear,
from many indications, that this emphasis is not founded in
reality. The real facts
concerning it have been confused by the existence abroad of
genuine resentment
provoked by Soviet philosophy and tactics and occasionally by
the existence of great
centers of military power, notably the Nazi regime in Germany
and the Japanese
Government of the late 1930s, which indeed have aggressive
designs against the Soviet
Union. But there is ample evidence that the stress laid in
Moscow on the menace
confronting Soviet society from the world outside its borders is
founded not in the
realities of foreign antagonism but in the necessity of
explaining away the maintenance
of dictatorial authority at home.
Now the maintenance of this pattern of Soviet power, namely,
the pursuit of unlimited
authority domestically, accompanied by the cultivation of the
semi-myth of implacable

foreign hostility, has gone far to shape the actual machinery of
Soviet power as we
know it today. Internal organs of administration which did not
serve this purpose
withered on the vine. Organs which did serve this purpose
became vastly swollen. The
security of Soviet power came to rest on the iron discipline of
the Party, on the severity
and ubiquity of the secret police, and on the uncompromising
economic monopolism
of the state. The "organs of suppression," in which the Soviet
leaders had sought
security from rival forces, became in large measures the masters
of those whom they
were designed to serve. Today the major part of the structure of
Soviet power is
committed to the perfection of the dictatorship and to the
maintenance of the concept
of Russia as in a state of siege, with the enemy lowering beyond
the walls. And the
millions of human beings who form that part of the structure of
power must defend at
all costs this concept of Russia's position, for without it they
are themselves
superfluous.
As things stand today, the rulers can no longer dream of parting
with these organs of
suppression. The quest for absolute power, pursued now for
nearly three decades with
a ruthlessness unparalleled (in scope at least) in modern times,
has again produced
internally, as it did externally, its own reaction. The excesses of
the police apparatus
have fanned the potential opposition to the regime into
something far greater and more

dangerous than it could have been before those excesses began.
But least of all can the rulers dispense with the fiction by which
the maintenance of
dictatorial power has been defended. For this fiction has been
canonized in Soviet
philosophy by the excesses already committed in its name; and
it is now anchored in
the Soviet structure of thought by bonds far greater than those
of mere ideology.
Part II
So much for the historical background. What does it spell in
terms of the political
personality of Soviet power as we know it today?
Of the original ideology, nothing has been officially junked.
Belief is maintained in the
basic badness of capitalism, in the inevitability of its
destruction, in the obligation of
the proletariat to assist in that destruction and to take power
into its own hands. But
stress has come to be laid primarily on those concepts which
relate most specifically to
the Soviet regime itself: to its position as the sole truly
Socialist regime in a dark and
misguided world, and to the relationships of power within it.
The first of these concepts is that of the innate antagonism
between capitalism and
Socialism. We have seen how deeply that concept has become
imbedded in
foundations of Soviet power. It has profound implications for

Russia's conduct as a
member of international society. It means that there can never
be on Moscow's side an
sincere assumption of a community of aims between the Soviet
Union and powers
which are regarded as capitalist. It must inevitably be assumed
in Moscow that the
aims of the capitalist world are antagonistic to the Soviet
regime, and therefore to the
interests of the peoples it controls. If the Soviet government
occasionally sets it
signature to documents which would indicate the contrary, this
is to regarded as a
tactical maneuver permissible in dealing with the enemy (who is
without honor) and
should be taken in the spirit of caveat emptor. Basically, the
antagonism remains. It is
postulated. And from it flow many of the phenomena which we
find disturbing in the
Kremlin's conduct of foreign policy: the secretiveness, the lack
of frankness, the
duplicity, the wary suspiciousness, and the basic unfriendliness
of purpose. These
phenomena are there to stay, for the foreseeable future. There
can be variations of
degree and of emphasis. When there is something the Russians
want from us, one or
the other of these features of their policy may be thrust
temporarily into the
background; and when that happens there will always be
Americans who will leap
forward with gleeful announcements that "the Russians have
changed," and some who
will even try to take credit for having brought about such
"changes." But we should not
be misled by tactical maneuvers. These characteristics of Soviet

policy, like the
postulate from which they flow, are basic to the internal nature
of Soviet power, and
will be with us, whether in the foreground or the background,
until the internal nature
of Soviet power is changed.
This means we are going to continue for long time to find the
Russians difficult to deal
with. It does not mean that they should be considered as
embarked upon a do-or-die
program to overthrow our society by a given date. The theory of
the inevitability of the
eventual fall of capitalism has the fortunate connotation that
there is no hurry about it.
The forces of progress can take their time in preparing the final
coup de grï¿½ce.
meanwhile, what is vital is that the "Socialist fatherland" -- that
oasis of power which
has already been won for Socialism in the person of the Soviet
Union -- should be
cherished and defended by all good Communists at home and
abroad, its fortunes
promoted, its enemies badgered and confounded. The promotion
of premature,
"adventuristic" revolutionary projects abroad which might
embarrass Soviet power in
any way would be an inexcusable, even a counter-revolutionary
act. The cause of
Socialism is the support and promotion of Soviet power, as
defined in Moscow.
This brings us to the second of the concepts important to

contemporary Soviet outlook.
That is the infallibility of the Kremlin. The Soviet concept of
power, which permits no
focal points of organization outside the Party itself, requires
that the Party leadership
remain in theory the sole repository of truth. For if truth were to
be found elsewhere,
there would be justification for its expression in organized
activity. But it is precisely
that which the Kremlin cannot and will not permit.
The leadership of the Communist Party is therefore always
right, and has been always
right ever since in 1929 Stalin formalized his personal power by
announcing that
decisions of the Politburo were being taken unanimously.
On the principle of infallibility there rests the iron discipline of
the Communist Party.
In fact, the two concepts are mutually self-supporting. Perfect
discipline requires
recognition of infallibility. Infallibility requires the observance
of discipline. And the
two go far to determine the behaviorism of the entire Soviet
apparatus of power. But
their effect cannot be understood unless a third factor be taken
into account: namely,
the fact that the leadership is at liberty to put forward for
tactical purposes any
particular thesis which it finds useful to the cause at any
particular moment and to
require the faithful and unquestioning acceptance of that thesis
by the members of the
movement as a whole. This means that truth is not a constant
but is actually created,
for all intents and purposes, by the Soviet leaders themselves. It

may vary from week
to week, from month to month. It is nothing absolute and
immutable -- nothing which
flows from objective reality. It is only the most recent
manifestation of the wisdom of
those in whom the ultimate wisdom is supposed to reside,
because they represent the
logic of history. The accumulative effect of these factors is to
give to the whole
subordinate apparatus of Soviet power an unshakable
stubbornness and steadfastness in
its orientation. This orientation can be changed at will by the
Kremlin but by no other
power. Once a given party line has been laid down on a given
issue of current policy,
the whole Soviet governmental machine, including the
mechanism of diplomacy,
moves inexorably along the prescribed path, like a persistent
toy automobile wound up
and headed in a given direction, stopping only when it meets
with some unanswerable
force. The individuals who are the components of this machine
are unamenable to
argument or reason, which comes to them from outside sources.
Their whole training
has taught them to mistrust and discount the glib persuasiveness
of the outside world.
Like the white dog before the phonograph, they hear only the
"master's voice." And if
they are to be called off from the purposes last dictated to them,
it is the master who
must call them off. Thus the foreign representative cannot hope
that his words will
make any impression on them. The most that he can hope is that
they will be
transmitted to those at the top, who are capable of changing the

party line. But even
those are not likely to be swayed by any normal logic in the
words of the bourgeois
representative. Since there can be no appeal to common
purposes, there can be no
appeal to common mental approaches. For this reason, facts
speak louder than words to
the ears of the Kremlin; and words carry the greatest weight
when they have the ring of
reflecting, or being backed up by, facts of unchallengeable
validity.
But we have seen that the Kremlin is under no ideological
compulsion to accomplish
its purposes in a hurry. Like the Church, it is dealing in
ideological concepts which are
of long-term validity, and it can afford to be patient. It has no
right to risk the existing
achievements of the revolution for the sake of vain baubles of
the future. The very
teachings of Lenin himself require great caution and flexibility
in the pursuit of
Communist purposes. Again, these precepts are fortified by the
lessons of Russian
history: of centuries of obscure battles between nomadic forces
over the stretches of a
vast unfortified plain. Here caution, circumspection, flexibility
and deception are the
valuable qualities; and their value finds a natural appreciation
in the Russian or the
oriental mind. Thus the Kremlin has no compunction about
retreating in the face of
superior forces. And being under the compulsion of no

timetable, it does not get
panicky under the necessity for such retreat. Its political action
is a fluid stream which
moves constantly, wherever it is permitted to move, toward a
given goal. Its main
concern is to make sure that it has filled every nook and cranny
available to it in the
basin of world power. But if it finds unassailable barriers in its
path, it accepts these
philosophically and accommodates itself to them. The main
thing is that there should
always be pressure, unceasing constant pressure, toward the
desired goal. There is no
trace of any feeling in Soviet psychology that that goal must be
reached at any given
time.
These considerations make Soviet diplomacy at once easier and
more difficult to deal
with than the diplomacy of individual aggressive leaders like
Napoleon and Hitler. On
the one hand it is more sensitive to contrary force, more ready
to yield on individual
sectors of the diplomatic front when that force is felt to be too
strong, and thus more
rational in the logic and rhetoric of power. On the other hand it
cannot be easily
defeated or discouraged by a single victory on the part of its
opponents. And the
patient persistence by which it is animated means that it can be
effectively countered
not by sporadic acts which represent the momentary whims of
democratic opinion but
only be intelligent long-range policies on the part of Russia's
adversaries -- policies no
less steady in their purpose, and no less variegated and

resourceful in their application,
than those of the Soviet Union itself.
In these circumstances it is clear that the main element of any
United States policy
toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but
firm and vigilant
containment of Russian expansive tendencies. It is important to
note, however, that
such a policy has nothing to do with outward histrionics: with
threats or blustering or
superfluous gestures of outward "toughness." While the Kremlin
is basically flexible in
its reaction to political realities, it is by no means unamenable
to considerations of
prestige. Like almost any other government, it can be placed by
tactless and
threatening gestures in a position where it cannot afford to yield
even though this
might be dictated by its sense of realism. The Russian leaders
are keen judges of
human psychology, and as such they are highly conscious that
loss of temper and of
self-control is never a source of strength in political affairs.
They are quick to exploit
such evidences of weakness. For these reasons it is a sine qua
non of successful
dealing with Russia that the foreign government in question
should remain at all times
cool and collected and that its demands on Russian policy
should be put forward in
such a manner as to leave the way open for a compliance not too
detrimental to

Russian prestige.
Part III
In the light of the above, it will be clearly seen that the Soviet
pressure against the free
institutions of the western world is something that can be
contained by the adroit and
vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly
shifting geographical and
political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of
Soviet policy, but which
cannot be charmed or talked out of existence. The Russians look
forward to a duel of
infinite duration, and they see that already they have scored
great successes. It must be
borne in mind that there was a time when the Communist Party
represented far more of
a minority in the sphere of Russian national life than Soviet
power today represents in
the world community.
But if the ideology convinces the rulers of Russia that truth is
on their side and they
they can therefore afford to wait, those of us on whom that
ideology has no claim are
free to examine objectively the validity of that premise. The
Soviet thesis not only
implies complete lack of control by the west over its own
economic destiny, it likewise
assumes Russian unity, discipline and patience over an infinite
period. Let us bring this
apocalyptic vision down to earth, and suppose that the western
world finds the strength
and resourcefulness to contain Soviet power over a period of ten
to fifteen years. What

does that spell for Russia itself?
The Soviet leaders, taking advantage of the contributions of
modern techniques to the
arts of despotism, have solved the question of obedience within
the confines of their
power. Few challenge their authority; and even those who do
are unable to make that
challenge valid as against the organs of suppression of the state.
The Kremlin has also proved able to accomplish its purpose of
building up Russia,
regardless of the interests of the inhabitants, and industrial
foundation of heavy
metallurgy, which is, to be sure, not yet complete but which is
nevertheless continuing
to grow and is approaching those of the other major industrial
countries. All of this,
however, both the maintenance of internal political security and
the building of heavy
industry, has been carried out at a terrible cost in human life
and in human hopes and
energies. It has necessitated the use of forced labor on a scale
unprecedented in modern
times under conditions of peace. It has involved the neglect or
abuse of other phases of
Soviet economic life, particularly agriculture, consumers' goods
production, housing
and transportation.
To all that, the war has added its tremendous toll of destruction,
death and human
exhaustion. In consequence of this, we have in Russia today a
population which is
physically and spiritually tired. The mass of the people are
disillusioned, skeptical and

no longer as accessible as they once were to the magical
attraction which Soviet power
still radiates to its followers abroad. The avidity with which
people seized upon the
slight respite accorded to the Church for tactical reasons during
the war was eloquent
testimony to the fact that their capacity for faith and devotion
found little expression in
the purposes of the regime.
In these circumstances, there are limits to the physical and
nervous strength of people
themselves. These limits are absolute ones, and are binding
even for the cruelest
dictatorship, because beyond them people cannot be driven. The
forced labor camps
and the other agencies of constraint provide temporary means of
compelling people to
work longer hours than their own volition or mere economic
pressure would dictate;
but if people survive them at all they become old before their
time and must be
considered as human casualties to the demands of dictatorship.
In either case their best
powers are no longer available to society and can no longer be
enlisted in the service of
the state.
Here only the younger generations can help. The younger
generation, despite all
vicissitudes and sufferings, is numerous and vigorous; and the
Russians are a talented
people. But it still remains to be seen what will be the effects

on mature performance
of the abnormal emotional strains of childhood which Soviet
dictatorship created and
which were enormously increased by the war. Such things as
normal security and
placidity of home environment have practically ceased to exist
in the Soviet Union
outside of the most remote farms and villages. And observers
are not yet sure whether
that is not going to leave its mark on the over-all capacity of the
generation now
coming into maturity.
In addition to this, we have the fact that Soviet economic
development, while it can list
certain formidable achievements, has been precariously spotty
and uneven. Russian
Communists who speak of the "uneven development of
capitalism" should blush at the
contemplation of their own national economy. Here certain
branches of economic life,
such as the metallurgical and machine industries, have been
pushed out of all
proportion to other sectors of economy. Here is a nation striving
to become in a short
period one of the great industrial nations of the world while it
still has no highway
network worthy of the name and only a relatively primitive
network of railways. Much
has been done to increase efficiency of labor and to teach
primitive peasants something
about the operation of machines. But maintenance is still a
crying deficiency of all
Soviet economy. Construction is hasty and poor in quality.
Depreciation must be
enormous. And in vast sectors of economic life it has not yet

been possible to instill
into labor anything like that general culture of production and
technical self-respect
which characterizes the skilled worker of the west.
It is difficult to see how these deficiencies can be corrected at
an early date by a tired
and dispirited population working largely under the shadow of
fear and compulsion.
And as long as they are not overcome, Russia will remain
economically as vulnerable,
and in a certain sense an impotent, nation, capable of exporting
its enthusiasms and of
radiating the strange charm of its primitive political vitality but
unable to back up those
articles of export by the real evidences of material power and
prosperity.
Meanwhile, a great uncertainty hangs over the political life of
the Soviet Union. That is
the uncertainty involved in the transfer of power from one
individual or group of
individuals to others.
This is, of course, outstandingly the problem of the personal
position of Stalin. We
must remember that his succession to Lenin's pinnacle of pre-
eminence in the
Communist movement was the only such transfer of individual
authority which the
Soviet Union has experienced. That transfer took 12 years to
consolidate. It cost the
lives of millions of people and shook the state to its

foundations. The attendant tremors
were felt all through the international revolutionary movement,
to the disadvantage of
the Kremlin itself.
It is always possible that another transfer of pre-eminent power
may take place quietly
and inconspicuously, with no repercussions anywhere. But
again, it is possible that the
questions involved may unleash, to use some of Lenin's words,
one of those
"incredibly swift transitions" from "delicate deceit" to "wild
violence" which
characterize Russian history, and may shake Soviet power to its
foundations.
But this is not only a question of Stalin himself. There has been,
since 1938, a
dangerous congealment of political life in the higher circles of
Soviet power. The All-
Union Congress of Soviets, in theory the supreme body of the
Party, is supposed to
meet not less often than once in three years. It will soon be
eight full years since its last
meeting. During this period membership in the Party has
numerically doubled. Party
mortality during the war was enormous; and today well over
half of the Party members
are persons who have entered since the last Party congress was
held. meanwhile, the
same small group of men has carried on at the top through an
amazing series of
national vicissitudes. Surely there is some reason why the
experiences of the war
brought basic political changes to every one of the great
governments of the west.

Surely the causes of that phenomenon are basic enough to be
present somewhere in the
obscurity of Soviet political life, as well. And yet no
recognition has been given to
these causes in Russia.
It must be surmised from this that even within so highly
disciplined an organization as
the Communist Party there must be a growing divergence in
age, outlook and interest
between the great mass of Party members, only so recently
recruited into the
movement, and the little self-perpetuating clique of men at the
top, whom most of
these Party members have never met, with whom they have
never conversed, and with
whom they can have no political intimacy.
Who can say whether, in these circumstances, the eventual
rejuvenation of the higher
spheres of authority (which can only be a matter of time) can
take place smoothly and
peacefully, or whether rivals in the quest for higher power will
not eventually reach
down into these politically immature and inexperienced masses
in order to find support
for their respective claims? If this were ever to happen, strange
consequences could
flow for the Communist Party: for the membership at large has
been exercised only in
the practices of iron discipline and obedience and not in the arts
of compromise and
accommodation. And if disunity were ever to seize and paralyze

the Party, the chaos
and weakness of Russian society would be revealed in forms
beyond description. For
we have seen that Soviet power is only concealing an
amorphous mass of human
beings among whom no independent organizational structure is
tolerated. In Russia
there is not even such a thing as local government. The present
generation of Russians
have never known spontaneity of collective action. If,
consequently, anything were
ever to occur to disrupt the unity and efficacy of the Party as a
political instrument,
Soviet Russia might be changed overnight from one of the
strongest to one of the
weakest and most pitiable of national societies.
Thus the future of Soviet power may not be by any means as
secure as Russian
capacity for self-delusion would make it appear to the men of
the Kremlin. That they
can quietly and easily turn it over to others remains to be
proved. Meanwhile, the
hardships of their rule and the vicissitudes of international life
have taken a heavy toll
of the strength and hopes of the great people on whom their
power rests. It is curious to
note that the ideological power of Soviet authority is strongest
today in areas beyond
the frontiers of Russia, beyond the reach of its police power.
This phenomenon brings
to mind a comparison used by Thomas Mann in his great novel
Buddenbrooks.
Observing that human institutions often show the greatest
outward brilliance at a
moment when inner decay is in reality farthest advanced, he

compared one of those
stars whose light shines most brightly on this world when in
reality it has long since
ceased to exist. And who can say with assurance that the strong
light still cast by the
Kremlin on the dissatisfied peoples of the western world is not
the powerful afterglow
of a constellation which is in actuality on the wane? This cannot
be proved. And it
cannot be disproved. But the possibility remains (and in the
opinion of this writer it is a
strong one) that Soviet power, like the capitalist world of its
conception, bears within it
the seeds of its own decay, and that the sprouting of these seeds
is well advanced.
Part IV
It is clear that the United States cannot expect in the
foreseeable future to enjoy
political intimacy with the Soviet regime. It must continue to
regard the Soviet Union
as a rival, not a partner, in the political arena. It must continue
to expect that Soviet
policies will reflect no abstract love of peace and stability, no
real faith in the
possibility of a permanent happy coexistence of the Socialist
and capitalist worlds, but
rather a cautious, persistent pressure toward the disruption and,
weakening of all rival
influence and rival power.
Balanced against this are the facts that Russia, as opposed to the
western world in
general, is still by far the weaker party, that Soviet policy is
highly flexible, and that

Soviet society may well contain deficiencies which will
eventually weaken its own
total potential. This would of itself warrant the United States
entering with reasonable
confidence upon a policy of firm containment, designed to
confront the Russians with
unalterable counter-force at every point where they show signs
of encroaching upon he
interests of a peaceful and stable world.
But in actuality the possibilities for American policy are by no
means limited to
holding the line and hoping for the best. It is entirely possible
for the United States to
influence by its actions the internal developments, both within
Russia and throughout
the international Communist movement, by which Russian
policy is largely
determined. This is not only a question of the modest measure
of informational activity
which this government can conduct in the Soviet Union and
elsewhere, although that,
too, is important. It is rather a question of the degree to which
the United States can
create among the peoples of the world generally the impression
of a country which
knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the
problem of its internal life
and with the responsibilities of a World Power, and which has a
spiritual vitality
capable of holding its own among the major ideological currents
of the time. To the
extent that such an impression can be created and maintained,

the aims of Russian
Communism must appear sterile and quixotic, the hopes and
enthusiasm of Moscow's
supporters must wane, and added strain must be imposed on the
Kremlin's foreign
policies. For the palsied decrepitude of the capitalist world is
the keystone of
Communist philosophy. Even the failure of the United States to
experience the early
economic depression which the ravens of the Red Square have
been predicting with
such complacent confidence since hostilities ceased would have
deep and important
repercussions throughout the Communist world.
By the same token, exhibitions of indecision, disunity and
internal disintegration
within this country have an exhilarating effect on the whole
Communist movement. At
each evidence of these tendencies, a thrill of hope and
excitement goes through the
Communist world; a new jauntiness can be noted in the Moscow
tread; new groups of
foreign supporters climb on to what they can only view as the
band wagon of
international politics; and Russian pressure increases all along
the line in international
affairs.
It would be an exaggeration to say that American behavior
unassisted and alone could
exercise a power of life and death over the Communist
movement and bring about the
early fall of Soviet power in Russia. But the United States has it
in its power to
increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must

operate, to force upon
the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and
circumspection than it has had to
observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies
which must eventually
find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing
of Soviet power. For no
mystical, Messianic movement -- and particularly not that of the
Kremlin -- can face
frustration indefinitely without eventually adjusting itself in
one way or another to the
logic of that state of affairs.
Thus the decision will really fall in large measure in this
country itself. The issue of
Soviet-American relations is in essence a test of the overall
worth of the United States
as a nation among nations. To avoid destruction the United
States need only measure
up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of
preservation as a great nation.
Surely, there was never a fairer test of national quality than
this. In the light of these
circumstances, the thoughtful observer of Russian-American
relations will find no
cause for complaint in the Kremlin's challenge to American
society. He will rather
experience a certain gratitude to a Providence which, by
providing the American
people with this implacable challenge, has made their entire
security as a nation
dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting
the responsibilities of

moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them
to bear.

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