President Harry Truman Was Tough on Communism - Except When He Wasn't

President Harry Truman spoke forcefully about his intentions to stop the USSR’s global imperial ambitions. He famously proclaimed the ‘Truman Doctrine’ in a speech, as he sought Congressional approval to aid the nation of Greece against an attempted Soviet takeover:

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

Truman also indicated that he would resist Soviet attempts to infiltrate the United States government with ‘moles,’ and that he would root out those communist agents who had already lodged themselves inside federal bureaucracy. Historian Stan Evans writes:

In many standard histories and bios, Truman is depicted as a tough cold warrior who bravely faced down Moscow, being teamed in this respect with his foreign policy vicar Acheson at State. Even more to the present point, we’re told, Truman cleaned up security problems on the home front.

The Soviet Union was about the business of taking over nations who did not want to become the victims of communist dictatorships. Truman successfully put forth the image of someone who would fight Soviet socialist aggression, as he did, e.g., in the case of Korea.

It was logical, therefore, if the public were to assume that Truman was also dedicated to eradicating the agents of the various Soviet intelligence agencies who had worked their way into positions inside the U.S. government.

The cleanup was supposedly effected through the Truman loyalty program, announced in March of 1947. Thanks to this draconian effort, it’s said, whatever Communists or security risks had got on official payrolls were ousted.

Puzzlingly, Truman’s actions on the domestic front did not always match his words. His efforts against the well-developed Soviet espionage network in North America were lackluster and halfhearted.

Some of the most notorious communist spies held position inside Truman’s administration. Robert Oppenheimer, Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and William Remington were a few of the many Soviet operatives who had access to sensitive information which they sent to Moscow, and also had access to the ears of policymakers, who could be influenced to unwittingly make pro-Soviet decisions.

This well developed intelligence network connect these individuals, and others, back to the USSR and eventually back to Stalin.

Truman, however, did not act on information given to him by the FBI which indicated that these men were major security risks, as Stan Evans writes:

Sad to say, this portrayal of Truman’s policy on the home front is almost entirely fiction. That he was a visceral anti-Communist is not in doubt. However, he seemed to know little about the way the Soviets and their U.S. agents functioned, or their presence in the government he headed, and didn’t show much interest in learning. This ennui persisted despite the myriad FBI reports supplied to the White House and Truman cabinet about the vast extent and serious nature of the penetration. Accordingly, not only was the security problem not cleaned up by 1950, some of the most flagrant suspects imaginable were flourishing in the federal workforce.

Why did Truman, who seemed dedicated to freeing the world of the communist threat, turn an inattentive eye to Soviet spies inside his own offices? Why did he not act when others attempted to alert him to this danger?

There are several possible answers.

Perhaps Truman was concerned about the image of a U.S. president having to publicly admit the presence of communist operatives inside the federal government. The political damage to his administration and to his party would be grave.

Or perhaps Truman, like many presidents, had to answer to higher powers - the leaders of his party, and the shadowy figures who operate internationalist conferences - who told him not to root out the dangers.

It’s possible that we’ll never know the cause of Truman’s mystifying inaction on this topic.

New Concepts of Warfare: Deterrence Both Large and Small

While students are often familiar with the word ‘deterrence’ in the context of doctrines like “massive retaliation” during the Cold War, they are less likely to know the word’s use in terms of smaller, regional conflicts. Deterrence is primarily taught in the context of the large arsenal of atomic weapons held by the United States: arsenals which made “massive response” or “massive deterrence” a reality.

Thus readers tend to think of deterrence on a macro scale: the extensive collections of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems in the face of Soviet aggression.

The goal of deterrence is always to prevent an armed conflict before it begins, by convincing a potential attacker that any aggression will meet with an overwhelming response.

By 1952, voters in the United States were tired of the Korean War. Eisenhower’s strategy was to prevent the United State from being dragged into similar regional conflicts by using deterrence on a regional scale. This was deterrence on a micro scale.

Structuring national defense systems for deterrence instead of for engagement requires a different type of planning. Prior to the Eisenhower presidency, the focus of military planning was for a large-scale confrontation with the Soviets, perhaps a land war, a re-play of WW2.

A WW2-style mobilization made no sense militarily because nuclear weapons had significantly changed strategy, and made no sense politically because the citizens were tired of protracted warfare. There was not much room, in Eisenhower’s deterrence strategies, for “tactical atomic” weapons.

Tactical nuclear weapons are intended for use within the context of conventional land war. They are often small missiles, with ranges of two or three miles.

By contrast, strategic nuclear weapons are large, powerful, and often delivered from thousands of miles away. They are intended either to be a part of strategic, not conventional, combat, or to deter combat altogether.

Although ‘tac nukes’ were produced in quantity throughout the Eisenhower administration, they were not a significant part of strategic planning.

Eisenhower’s goals were to get the United States out of the Korean conflict, to prevent U.S. entanglement in similar regional conflicts, and to accomplish this by developing deterrence on both a macro and a micro scale, as historian Russell Weigley writes:

The new Eisenhower administration embraced deterrence still more enthusiastically, with fewer backward glances toward plans for mobilization on the pattern of the World Wars. Apart from the asset of Dwight Eisenhower’s winning personality and prestige, the Republicans captured the Presidency in the election of 1952 largely because of voter discontent with the prolonged and puzzling Korean War. The new administration intended both to extricate the country from the Korean entanglement and to ensure against further involvements of the Korean type. It was able to succeed in the former aim, to end the fighting and the weary truce talks, for various reasons, including its political ability to be more flexible in negotiation than the Truman administration - few Americans could believe that Republicans were soft on Communism - and perhaps primarily, because Stalin soon died. Many in the new administration also believed that a threat to use atomic weapons in Korea, the message being conveyed to the Chinese through India, was decisive; this conviction was important in conditioning subsequent policy. For the second goal, guarding against a repetition of Korea, the new administration turned to an explicit strategy of deterrence, aimed at deterring local and limited as well as general wars.

Conventional war plans, on a strategic or macro level, were reactive, or at best responsive, and amounted to simply waiting for WW3 to break out. Deterrence was a more proactive approach.

Rather than make plans for a possible armed conflict with the Soviets, deterrence was designed to reduce the probability of that conflict, as historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski explain:

After the Korean War, the United States turned from a crisis-oriented military policy toward concepts and programs designed to last as long as the rivalry with the Soviet Union. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson adopted policies suited for “the long haul.” With Soviet-American competition accepted as the central fact in international relations, American policy makers regarded defense policy as a principal instrument for containing the parallel spread of Communism and Soviet imperialism. To check the extension of Soviet influence, the United States sought to reduce the chance that the Russians would threaten or use military force as a tool of international influence. For all the debate about the means and costs of defense, American policy rested upon consensual assumptions about the nature of the military challenge and the appropriate response. Supported by an activist coalition in Congress, the three Cold War presidents further refined containment, strategic deterrence, and forward, collective defense.

But on the political side, strategies of containment, deterrence, and defense are only as good as the realism needed to face the global situation, and are only as good as the will to implement such strategies.

On the American political scene, there were significant numbers of both leaders and voters who either did not understand, or willfully chose not to believe, that the crystalized goal of the USSR and the international communist conspiracy was the destruction of western societies leading to the Soviet Socialist domination of the world.

The Soviets were clearly focused on this goal, and willing to use, even intending to use, the deaths of thousands and millions of innocent civilians to reach this objective. In 1960, Senator Goldwater wrote:

The temptation is strong to blame the deterioration of America’s fortunes on the Soviet Union’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. But this is self-delusion. The rot had set in, the crumbling of our position was already observable, long before the Communists detonated their first Atom Bomb. Even in the early 1950s, when America still held unquestioned nuclear superiority, it was clear that we were losing the Cold War. Time and again in my campaign speeches of 1952 I warned my fellow Arizonians that “American Foreign Policy has brought us from a position of undisputed power, in seven short years, to the brink of possible disaster.” And in the succeeding seven years, that trend, because its cause remains, has continued.

There were enough voters and leaders, however, who accurately understood the Soviet threat. Although imperfectly, the United States was able to maintain enough deterrence that the USSR chose not to mount direct frontal attacks on either North America or western Europe.

The communists certainly continued their efforts at expansion, via proxy wars, via the acquisition of smaller defenseless countries, and via the espionage network they had established inside the United States. But America managed to deter a large-scale, massive Soviet military aggression.

Haldore Hanson: a Danger

Who was Haldore Hanson? His name is largely forgotten, but he posed a direct threat to lives, not only of United States citizens, but also of people around the globe. As historian Stan Evans notes, “Hanson was a full-time State Department employee.”

Hanson started out as a journalist, reporting on China in the late 1930s. But his writing was propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party, and its leader, Mao Tse-Tung. In his advocacy for Mao, whose name is also transliterated as Zedong, he broke no U.S. laws, but he did contribute to what would ultimately become the mass murder of millions of Chinese.

Later in his career, Hanson “served on the staff of Assistant Secretary of State William Benton.” Hanson also joined the CPUSA, the American Communist Party.

In the context of the Cold War, joining the CPUSA was not merely an expression of a political view, but rather it was supporting an organization which declared in its written materials the “inevitability of and necessity for violent revolution.” To join the CPUSA was to endorse, support, and prepare for the violent overthrow of the United States government - including the killing of innocent civilians.

Working in William Benton’s office, Hanson was “one of the numerous group of” communist “suspects once employed in that office.” By 1950, “Hanson headed a division at State that dealt with matters of foreign aid. Most to the present point, he had in the latter 1930s gone on record with some revealing comments about the Communist cause in China.”

Hanson was, therefore, separately, both a criminal and a danger. He was a criminal because he was working for the violent destruction of the American government, including the deaths of innocent civilians. He was a danger because he work to support Mao’s regime and its eventual slaughter of millions of Chinese.

Korea: Caught by Surprise

In the years immediately after WW2, the world was adjusting to the new alignments which would shape, and be shaped by, the Cold War which would last for the next several decades. There were the “Western” nations, roughly coalesced around Japan, the United States, England, and Germany - the NATO powers plus the friendly Pacific powers.

On the other side were the Communist powers, centered around the USSR and mainland China.

There were also ‘unaligned’ nations, who either in reality or in mere words sought to remain neutral or independent of the two groups which opposed each other in the broad framework of Cold War conceptualization.

There were many points of geographical contact between the two sides of the Cold War: the boundary between East German and West Germany, extending into the whole ‘Iron Curtain’ which ran up and down Europe from the Arctic Circle to the Mediterranean; the uneasy and unclear borders through southern and southeastern Asia; and the Pacific coast along eastern Asia, where sometimes narrow stretches of water separated Communist and nonCommunist nations by only a few miles.

While the NATO Allies were making efforts to be prepared should the Soviets launch a surprise attack across central Europe, they were surprised when North Korea attacked South Korea in June 1950. The North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) succeeded in overrunning almost all of South Korea, as historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski note:

Korea had been a backwater of American postwar diplomacy, and it did not loom large as a military concern. Divided in 1945 by an arbitrary line at the 38th Parallel so that occupying Russian and American forces could disarm the Japanese and establish temporary military administrations, Korea had by 1950 became part of the Cold War’s military frontier. In North Korea the Russians had turned political control over to the Communist regime of Kim Il Sung and helped him create an eleven-division army of 135,000 seasoned by service in the Soviet and Chinese communist armies. The NKPA was a pocket model of its Soviet counterpart, armed with T-34 tanks, heavy artillery, and attack aircraft.

Although the North Koreans experienced sweeping success in the first phase of the war, due to the element of surprise, to the unreadiness of the U.S. forces in South Korea, and to the small numbers of those U.S. forces, the South Koreans, aided both by the United States and by the United Nations, would turn the tide. The South would be freed of the NKPA invaders, the North would be largely in the hand of the U.S. and U.N. forces.

While the North Korean war planners were correct in their estimation that they could quickly advance through the South, they were wrong in believing that they could hold that ground for long. The United States had resources very close by, as Russell Weigley writes:

The authors of the North Korean invasion of South Korea had also miscalculated the American response. Despite the weaknesses of the American armed forces, hardly another place on the boundary between the Communist and non-Communist worlds could have been so well selected as a setting for the frustration of a Communist military venture by the military resources of the United States. Korea is a peninsula which at the narrowest point of the Strait of Tsushima is little more than a hundred miles from Japan. Therefore Korea lay within ready reach of the largest concentration of American troops outside the United States, the four divisions of General Douglas MacArthur’s army of occupation in Japan, and within ready reach also of American sea power.

Only two months before the NKPA invaded the south, a famous document known as NSC-68 hinted at the possibility of unilateral and unprovoked action by the Soviets or one of their proxy states, like North Korea. This document arrived too late, and even if it appeared earlier, it is not clear that the Truman administration would have taken significant actions to put South Korea on a more defensible footing.

To arrange U.S. and NATO forces to respond the dangers listed in NSC-68 would have required a reallocation of the resources inside the defense budget. Much of the thought in the Truman administration centered on deterring, defending against, or fighting in a global strategic nuclear conflict, or at least a massive conventional invasion through central Europe. A smaller regional war was not fully anticipated, as William Donnelly reports:

North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in June 1950 occurred as senior U.S. civilian and military officials were considering what to do about recommendations in an April 1950 State Department paper submitted to President Truman. This paper, NSC 68, had argued that there was an increasingly dangerous imbalance of power between the Soviet Union and the United States, an imbalance that favored the former and would lead the Soviets to take greater risks in advancing their interests. The United States, NSC 68 urged, should undertake a major military buildup to reassure its allies and deter the Soviet Union. Although the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) had not provided by June 1950 a final estimate of the forces required by NSC 68, there was no doubt that its implementation would involve a major increase in defense spending. But before June 1950, President Truman was not convinced such a step was necessary.

Domestic policy, foreign policy, and military policy should ideally harmonize to serve the national interest. Periodic reallocations within the defense budget are a necessary part of keeping policy both on task and congruent to current global realities.

The Korean conflict would serve to alert American policy makers to unanticipated dangers coming from the communist powers, as Mark Levin writes:

The moral imperative of all public policy must be the preservation and improvement of American society. Similarly, the object of American foreign policy must be no different.

The ‘improvement’ which is the goal of proper policy is the increase of personal freedom and individual political liberty. In domestic policy, this takes the forms of deregulation, tax cuts, and the defense of property rights. In foreign policy, and in military action, it takes the form of acting always to protect the lives, liberties, and properties of United States citizens.

South Korea survived the North’s attack, despite initial unpreparedness on the part of the United States, because major U.S. forces were able to be quickly redeployed from nearby Japan, and because those forces were large, well-equipped, and well-trained, relative to the NKPA and their Soviet supporters.

The American Economy, Circa 1960

Taxes are a perennial problem for citizens. They are, in the words of Thomas Paine, a “necessary evil.” Taxes are truly necessary: if a government is to have the resources to protect the lives, properties, and liberties of its citizens, it will need the resources to carry out that responsibility.

Yet taxes are truly evil: the are the confiscation of a citizen’s property. To the extent that property is attained by work, taxes are the appropriation of a citizen’s labor, and thereby constitute involuntary servitude: slavery.

This was true in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Rome, and Greece. It is also the case in modern history. Reviewing economic statistics sometime around 1959, Senator Goldwater wrote:

Here is an indication of how taxation currently infringes on our freedom. A family man earning $4,500 a year works on the average, twenty-two days a month. Taxes, visible and invisible, take approximately 32% of his earnings. This means that one-third, or seven whole days, of his monthly labor goes for taxes. The average American is therefore working one-third of the time for government: a third of what he produces is not available for his own use but is confiscated and used by others who have not earned it. Let us note that by this measure the United States is already one-third ‘socialized.’” The late Senator Taft made the point often. “You can socialize,” he said “just as well by a steady increase in the burden of taxation beyond the 30% we have already reached as you can by government seizure. The very imposition of heavy taxes is a limit on a man’s freedom.

That citizens tolerated, in the early 1960s, the government’s seizure of a third of their annual income is due to the disguised nature of that seizure. Had the government presented, all at once, a bill for that sum, a revolution would have been likely.

Instead, taxes were divided into various segments: income taxes, capital gains taxes, tariffs, etc. Some taxes are hidden in the cost of consumer goods: the price on a loaf of bread or a bottle of ketchup, for example, includes the taxes paid by the manufacturer and shipper of the goods.

The political process regularly features candidates who express sympathy for the citizens and the burden of taxation which they bear. Yet the uniformity with which those candidates, regardless of their party affiliation, fail to significantly alleviate that burden is a uniformity which engenders a cynicism on the part of the voters.

While eager to elect leaders who will address the excessive size of taxes, voters have ceased truly to expect meaningful relief in this regard. Senator Goldwater wrote: “I suspect that this vicious circle of cynicism and failure to perform is primarily the result of” the habit, found among the news media and the politicians, of addressing taxation as a technical economic inconvenience, instead of considering taxation as an ethical question.

When a government uses the brute force of regulation to confiscate property from citizens, then surely a moment of ethical consideration is in order. The old slogan of ‘no taxation without representation’ alerts us to the fact that ‘administrative rulings’ and ‘user fees’ constitute a path around proper legislative processes.

Yet, as Goldwater notes, the political class and the media have fueled cynicism because of their “success in reading out of the discussion the moral principles with which the subject of taxation is so intimately connected.”

Competing Economic Doctrines: ‘Creative Destruction’ vs. ‘Too Big To Fail’

In 1942, the economist Joseph Schumpeter earned a permanent place in history when he developed the phrase ‘creative destruction’ to describe how economic growth and innovation arise from the debris of failed enterprises.

On average, businesses which fail or go bankrupt are replaced by more successful companies. On average, a worker who is laid off eventually finds not only another job, but a better-paying one.

To secure the full benefits of Schumpeter’s principle, however, those who are in a position to intervene in the economy must exercise restraint. The sometimes counterintuitive implications of “creative destruction” may require regulators to stand back and allow the financial collapse of a business, or an entire industry, to play out.

The humanitarian impulse, of course, nudges the government to intervene on the behalf of failing companies for the sake of workers who might lose their jobs, or for the sake of investors who depend on dividends for their daily bread.

Yet the best outcome for workers and investors alike, over the long run, is to allow creative destruction to take its course. Bitter lessons of history show that, e.g., the 1979 bailout of the Chrysler Corporation did indeed keep the company alive, but only barely, and long-run effect was to extend the misery as auto workers coped with shrinking wages and investors found Chrysler to be less than fruitful.

Historians should not engage in speculation about counterfactual situations: so one may not confidently state what would have happened had the 1979 bailout not taken place.

However, the record shows numerous financial collapses and bankruptcies which ultimately led to new and larger business opportunities.

Opposing the doctrine of ‘creative destruction’ is the political notion that some enterprises are ‘too big to fail,’ meaning that they are too big to be allowed to fail.

This political approach argues that the government should intervene in the natural workings of marketplace to sustain large companies which might otherwise declare bankruptcy. Allegedly, this policy avoids a ‘domino effect’ or a ‘chain reaction’ of other business failures.

Both the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama implemented this policy, despite purported differences between those two presidencies.

Two sectors received this attention: the financial industry and the automotive industry. General Motors Corporation and Chrysler Corporation received massive government support at a time when there was at least the possibility that they might have to declare bankruptcy.

Concerning the continuity of the two administrations in this policy, Paula Gardner, reporting Sandy Baruah’s analysis of Obama’s actions, wrote:

Politics also might enter the message. Baruah said, “He vastly underplays the role President Bush played in setting the stage. The U.S. auto industry would not have been saveable in 2009 if George W. Bush had not taken the action that he did.”

One must be careful not to confuse the “U.S. auto industry” with a collection of auto companies. One or two companies can go bankrupt, and in so doing, strengthen the industry. By “saving” a company, one can weaken the industry.

Had GM or Chrysler declared bankruptcy, it would not have been the loss of thousands of jobs. The physical facilities of those corporations would have been maintained, the companies would have been restructured or sold or broken up, and new owners would have happily invested, getting manufacturing equipment and buildings at a bargain price.

The result would have been an energized industry and a burst of economic activity.

The tension, then, lies between two competing and mutually exclusive economic doctrines: ‘creative destruction’ vs. ‘too big to fail.’

The question is whether to save a company at the expense of the economy, or to save the economy at the expense of a company.

The organic functioning of an economy includes as a regular feature the failure of businesses. That the businesses are large or small makes no difference. David Stockman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget from January 1981 to August 1985, reviews the recent history how individuals were willing to let the economy work its own course:

Certainly President Eisenhower’s treasury secretary and doughty opponent of Big Government, George Humphrey, would never have conflated the future of capitalism with the stock price of two or even two dozen Wall Street firms. Nor would President Kennedy’s treasury secretary, Douglas Dillon, have done so, even had his own family’s firm been imperiled. President Ford’s treasury secretary and fiery apostle of free market capitalism, Bill Simon, would have crushed any bailout proposal in a thunder of denunciation. Even President Reagan’s man at the Treasury Department, Don Regan, a Wall Street lifer who had build the modern Merrill Lynch, resisted the 1984 bailout of Continental Illinois until the very end.

Prosperity is the result of allowing individuals and businesses to trade freely, and allowing them to experience the consequences of those trades - for good or for ill. It is tempting to intervene, with the well-intentioned desire to alleviate the short-term financial turmoil brought about by bankruptcies.

But, in avoiding that short-term pain, one prevents the economy from maximizing its long-term gains. A worker might be spared a few months of unemployment, but he is now left to languish at wages lower than if he’d been laid off in bankruptcy and later rehired by a business which was more competitive than the original one.

Immigration: Legal vs. Illegal

Immigration is a central question for national and international politics during the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first.

In the United States, this question takes the form of analyzing the distinction between ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ immigration. It is a question of law, and of knowing and deliberate violation of the law.

Legal immigrants are, by definition, welcome in the United States. They contribute to the economy and pay their prescribed taxes. They can eventually become full citizens.

Illegal immigrants are criminals, because they have understood the rules beforehand, and have chosen to break those rules. They pay fewer taxes and are therefore not fully supporting the system from which they draw significant social benefits.

The political controversies emerge when people use the word ‘immigrant’ without clearly stating whether they are referring to legal or illegal immigrants.

The example of California is instructive. In 1994, the state had between 1.3 and 2 million illegal immigrants. The exact number is, of course, difficult to determine, because illegal immigrants are constantly working to conceal the fact that they have violated the law.

In that year, California’s voters approved Proposition 187, which was designed to ensure that legal immigrants received social benefits, and to ensure that illegal immigrants did not take those benefits from the legal immigrants.

Because 1994 was a statewide election year, the voting on Proposition 187 was linked with the voting on candidates for various statewide offices. An editor for the University of Michigan’s Michigan Law Review writes:

In 1994, Governor Pete Wilson of California pulled off an amazing come-from-behind victory by tethering himself with titanium cords to Proposition 187, which prohibited illegal aliens from collecting public services. Wilson went from a catastrophic 15 percent job-approval rating to a landslide victory. Suddenly he was being touted as presidential material.

Unrelated the California’s Proposition 187, but related to the topic of immigration, journalist Martin Wolf, writing for the Financial Times, reports that

The share of immigrants in populations has jumped sharply. It is hard to argue that this has brought large economic, social and cultural benefits to the mass of the population.

Note that immigration itself is not harmful to national economies, but illegal immigration does serious damage. Legal immigration has beneficial effects, but illegal immigration is a major problem facing various world governments in the early twenty-first century.