ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

Cold War, The Start of the Atomic Agewhat came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, theAmerican president asked Congress on March 12, 1947, toauthorize economic and military aid for the two nations toprevent a communist take-over. According to Truman, thiswas a litmus test of the willingness of the United States tostop the spread of communism everywhere in the world.Couching the conflict in ideological and moral terms,Truman proclaimed that people would have to choosebetween the alternatives of communist tyranny and democraticfreedom. After Truman’s impassioned speech, therequested aid package passed Congress easily. The TrumanDoctrine prompted most Americans to view the conflictwith the U.S.S.R. as a primarily ideological strugglebetween binary opposites of good and evil.United States national security policy during the Trumanadministration revolved, however, around more thanideology. In the eyes of Washington’s policy makers,American predominance depended on power, which theydefined as the control of resources, industrial infrastructure,and strategic superiority. The National Security Council(NSC) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), createdby the National Security Act of 1947, used the same criteriawhen assessing potential Communist threats and Americanvital interests. The NSC served as a crucial strategicplanning body for security policy. The CIA continued theespionage work of the wartime Office of Strategic Services(OSS). In 1950, a planning document drafted by the NSC,NSC-68, predicted an indefinite period of conflict with theSoviet Union, calling for a vast American military buildup.In the ensuing years, NSC-68 became the basis for AmericanCold War strategy.Ideological premises and geostrategic security concernswere inextricably linked with American economicinterests. Becoming one the most important initiatives ofthe early Cold War, the Marshall Plan of 1947 served theseeconomic interests and finalized the division of the worldinto two hostile camps. Drawn up by secretary of stateGeorge Marshall (1880–1959), the plan launched a massiveeconomic aid package for the reconstruction of WesternEurope. Healthy capitalist economies, Marshall argued,would provide American companies with newmarkets and could help weld European nations into aneffective bulwark against Communism.Although the United States invited the Soviet Unionand Eastern European countries to apply for economic aidas well, negotiations soon demonstrated that Stalin wouldnever accept the American plan. In fact, the Marshall Planwould not only allow the United States to control thedistribution of aid, but would also give them access to theSoviet Union’s economic records. Predictably, Stalin withdrewfrom the negotiations and countered the Americaneconomic aid project with the Molotov Plan, a series ofbilateral trade agreements with Eastern European countries.The Soviet plan transformed these countries into aCommunist counter alliance against the West.In another confrontation, Stalin attempted to forcethe United States, Great Britain, and France to revoke theirdecision to unify their three occupation zones in Germany.On July 23, 1948, the Soviet dictator initiated a year-longblockade of all supplies to the city of Berlin in the Russianzone. The United States responded with a well-organizedair lift, which supplied the encircled city for almost oneyear. In the end, the air lift forced Stalin to give up theblockade. By that time, however, the Soviet Union alreadydominated Eastern Europe. In February, 1948, Czech andSlovak communists had toppled Czechoslovakia’s democraticgovernment and established a pro-Soviet Communistregime, adding the country to the Soviet bloc. InHungary, Stalin also had imposed Communist rule. Whenthe western part of Germany constituted itself as theFederal Republic of Germany in spring of 1949, the U.S.S.R.initiated the permanent division of the country by establishingthe German Democratic Republic in the formerRussian occupation zone. On April 4, 1949, the UnitedStates, Canada, and ten Western European nations hadreacted to Soviet hostilities forming the North AtlanticTreaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance designedto protect its members against a potential Soviet attack.Thus, by 1950, the framework of the Cold War wasfirmly in place, prompting both sides to enhance theirmilitary capabilities, in particular their nuclear arsenal. Bythe beginning of the new decade, the United States hadamassed three hundred nuclear weapons. However, sincethe American administration had learned in early September,1949, that the Soviet Union had successfully tested anatomic bomb, American policy makers considered thatthe strategic superiority of the United States might be injeopardy. As a result, President Truman ordered Americanscientists to develop a weapon that was even more powerful:the hydrogen bomb. By the mid-1950s, both nationshad developed and tested this new weapon, marking thebeginning of a new round of Cold War confrontations.❚ FURTHER READING:BOOKS:Carlisle, Rodney P., with Joan M. Zenzen. Supplyingthe Nuclear Arsenal: American Production Reactors,1942–1992. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press,1996.Gaddis, John L. The United States and the Origins of theCold War. rev. ed. New York: Columbia University Press,2000.———. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1997.Herken, Gregg. Cardinal Choices: Presidential ScienceAdvising from the Atom Bomb to SDI. rev. and exp. ed.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2000.Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Unionand Atomic Energy, 1939–1954. New Haven, CT.: YaleUniversity Press, 1994.Leffler, Melvyn P. A Preponderance of Power: NationalSecurity, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992.232 Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security