Beginnings of the Cold War Arms
Race: The Truman Administration and the U.S. Arms Build-Up by
Raymond P. Ojserkis. Praeger Publishers (http://www.praeger.com), 88 Post
Road West, Westport, Connecticut 06881-5007, 2003, 248 pages, $65.00
(hardcover).
The thesis of this fine book can be found in one of its quotations from Pres. Harry S. Truman. Discussing the impact of the Korean War with a journalist in 1953, Truman said that the communist invasion of South Korea was “the greatest error he [Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin] made in his whole career.” Without that invasion, Truman continued, “we’d have done what we did after World War I: completely disarmed. And it would have been a cinch for him to take over the European nations, one by one.” Raymond P. Ojserkis masterfully supports this thesis throughout Beginnings of the Cold War Arms Race, utilizing an impressive array of archival materials in the United States and Great Britain, personal papers, memoirs, contemporary press accounts, and secondary sources. The author, who holds a DPhil degree in international history from the London School of Economics and History, demonstrates a thorough understanding of both the men and events that shaped America’s awakening to the dangers of the Cold War.
Ojserkis emphasizes the American arms buildup following the outbreak of war in Korea in 1950, but he places that within the broader context of US domestic and foreign policy. He is certainly not the first scholar to argue that the Korean War marked a major turning point in recent American history. But he parts company with scholars such as Samuel Huntington, who, in his classic work The Soldier and the State, claimed that Truman accepted the robust military and containment strategy outlined in National Security Council Report 68 (NSC 68), United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, 14 April 1950, and personally desired an arms buildup that he also deemed politically impossible prior to the Korean War. Ojserkis disagrees, building upon an analysis of Truman’s own words, budget plans, and the positions of his cabinet members to show that the president planned to cut defense spending right up to the very day North Korean troops poured south across the Korean demilitarized zone.
More importantly, Ojserkis convincingly demonstrates that Truman’s reaction to the outbreak of war in Korea was not limited to the defense of the government in Seoul. Within the next two years, the US defense budget tripled in size, and America embarked on a massive conventional- and nuclear-arms buildup. Much of that resultant armed strength went not to Korea but to Europe—prompting Gen Douglas MacArthur, the US and UN commander in Korea, to complain that, as in World War II, his Pacific operations were once again secondary to those in Europe!
Readers may wish to consider this book in tandem with Thomas P. M. Barnett’s The Pentagon’s New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century (2004). Both consider the challenges and options facing the United States and its presidents at critical moments in the nation’s history. Barnett, in fact, compares Pres. George W. Bush and the strategic landscape he faced in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks to Harry Truman following the outbreak of the Korean War. Barnett claims that Truman had the “easier” task since the Soviet Union presented a more rational and understandable threat.
Ojserkis demonstrates, however, that determining what to do in the face of apparent communist aggression was anything but easy for Truman. The author notes, for example, that Truman had to contend with a lack of dependable intelligence on Soviet capabilities and intentions, the size of Moscow’s atomic arsenal, and the rise of McCarthyism at home. Ojserkis maintains that when war broke out in Korea, Truman nevertheless quickly concluded that it was part of a larger Soviet threat that required a broad, even global, American response. He does not discount an ideological aspect to this response, noting the crusading tone of NSC 68, but does so without allowing his work to degenerate into yet another polemic aimed at blaming red-baiting American cold warriors with overreacting and setting in motion a ruinous arms race that might otherwise have been avoided had cooler heads prevailed. Ojserkis concludes that the Soviet threat might have been overstated, but it was real—Stalin’s paranoia and unpredictability made it so.
The Korean War not only ended Truman’s fiscal conservatism, it also fundamentally changed “peacetime” America. In the face of a seemingly implacable and expansionist Soviet Union, the Truman administration extended conscription, reinstituted wartime wage and price controls, and poured money into a massive conventional-arms buildup while social programs designed as part of Truman’s Fair Deal lost funding or disappeared altogether. America was fighting a “limited,” undeclared war in Korea, but, according to Ojserkis, the country was really preparing for another global confrontation by accepting the rearming of Germany and Japan, building national air defenses, and establishing a far-flung network of bases and alliances. More importantly, Ojserkis deftly describes these changes against the backdrop of bureaucratic and ideological maneuvering within the military and the administration that, for good or ill, set the stage for America’s response to the Soviet challenge. Moreover, Truman’s changes in America’s global commitments—to NATO, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and other nations and regions—have actually survived the Cold War. Ojserkis declares that none of this would have happened without the war in Korea.
Raymond Ojserkis has produced a richly researched and balanced survey of a tumultuous and often misunderstood time in American history. Military officers, students of international relations and bureaucratic politics, as well as Cold War historians and defense analysts will find much of value in this superbly written book. Beginnings of the Cold War Arms Race also reminds us that policies put in place in response to the attacks of 9/11 may likewise shape the diplomatic and military posture of this nation for decades to come.
Dr. Mark J. Conversino
Maxwell AFB, Alabama
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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