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Western intelligence, the Soviet threat and NSC-68: a reply to Beatrice Heuser

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2010

Michael Cox
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Extract

In her article on the early history of the Cold War, Beatrice Heuser throws out at a challenge to those of us who have, over the past few years, cast doubt upon the idea that the USSR represented a serious military threat to the West after the Second World War. Basing her argument upon ‘American intelligence estimates’ as well as other sources, she attempts to show that Western policy-makers, hither to much criticized by many academic analysts for having exaggerated Soviet capabilities and over-dramatizing its intentions, had good reason to be fearful of the Soviet Union. ‘American and British governments’, according to Dr Heuser, ‘had information which led them to fear Soviet aggression in Europe and elsewhere’ after 1948. In the light of this information—not to mention the North Korean attack upon the South—rearmament, she argues, ‘may well have been an appropriate response to the Soviet threat’. It certainly ‘worried Stalin’ and possibly prevented Soviet aggression in Europe. It was, in short, a reasonable response to a real problem and probably contributed (although by how much can never be known) to the successful containment of the USSR. NSC-68 may not have been such a flawed document after all.

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Reply
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , January 1992 , pp. 75 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1992

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References

1 Heuser, Beatrice, ‘NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat: A New Perspective on Western Threat Perception and Policy Making’, Review of International Studies, 17 (1991), pp. 17–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 On the rise of revisionism see Melanson, Richard, Writing History And Making Policy: The Cold War, Vietnam, and Revisionism (Lanham, 1983)Google Scholar.

3 For a discussion of the revisionist thesis and the controversy it caused see my ‘From the Truman Doctrine to the Second Superpower Detente: The Rise and Fall of the Cold War', Journal of Peace Research, 27, (1990), pp. 25–41.

4 One of the more influential radical writers on international relations, Noam Chomsky, has argued that the Cold War was a ‘marvellous device by means of which the domestic population could be mobilized i n support of aggressive and interventionist [US] policies under the threat of the superpower enemy'. Cited in Noam Chomsky et al., Superpowers In Collision: The New Cold War (Harmondsworth, 1982), p. 26.

5 For an early assessment by George Kennan of the devastating impact of the War on the USSR see his ‘Russia—Seven Years Later’ (September 1944). This can be found in his Memoirs: 1925–1950 (Boston, 1967), esp. pp. 505–7. See my forthcoming ‘Requiem for A Cold War Critic: The Rise and Fall of George F. Kennan’: 1946–1950, Irish Slavonic Studies, no. 11 (1991), pp. 1–35, for an analysis of Kennan's speedy marginalization from the inner circles of the US foreign policy elite.

6 For a discussion of the military imbalance in one vital area after the war, see the classic revisionist work by Alperovitz, Gar, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power (New York, 1965)Google Scholar. For less radical, but equally illuminating analyses of American military advantage in the postwar period see Davis, Vincent, Postwar Defense Policy and the US Navy, 1943–1946 (Chapel Hill, 1966)Google Scholar, Smith, Perry McCoy, The Air Force Plansfor Peace, 1943–1945 (Maryland, 1970)Google Scholar, and Sherry, Michael, Preparing for the Next War: American Plans for Postwar Defense, 1941–1945 (New Haven, 1977)Google Scholar.

7 On Stalin's non-revolutionary strategy after the Second World War, see the Marxist study by Kolko, Gabriel, The Politics Of War: Allied Diplomacy and the World Crisis—1943–1945 (London, 1969)Google Scholar.

8 President Truman himself confided in 1951 that the USSR faced too many problems at home and ‘too much trouble with [its] satellites’ to launch any military offensive. Cited in Crock, Arthur, Memoirs (New York, 1968), p. 261Google Scholar.

9 See Gaddis, John, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War: 1941–1947 (New York, 1972)Google Scholar, and Yergin, Daniel, The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (Harmondsworth, 1977)Google Scholar.

10 John Gaddis, for example, deals rather sympathetically with US policy-makers in the Cold War, even though he accepts they overreacted to a ‘perceived’ Soviet threat. See his The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History of the Cold War (New York, 1987), esp. pp. 20–47.

11 See Gaddis, John, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York, 1982)Google Scholar.

12 In his study of the Korean War, David Rees refers to the ‘full shock’ when the news of the North Korean invasion of South Korea ‘hit official Washington’ on Monday, 25 June. There were many ‘who thought that the complete surprise shown resembled that of another Sunday morning not nine years before—7 December 1941’. See his Korea: The Limited War (New York, 1964), p. 6.

13 See Beatrice Heuser, ‘Stalin as Hitler's Successor: Western Interpretations of the Soviet Threat’, chapter 2 in Beatrice Heuser and Robert O'Neill (eds.), Securing Peace In Europe: 1945–1962 (London, 1991).

14 The origins and reasons for the American tendency to ignore ‘contradictory evidence’ pointing to ‘signs of Soviet weakness, moderation and circumspection’ have been brilliantly analyzed by Martin Leffler in his ‘The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945–48’, American Historical Review, 89 (1984), pp. 346–400. Interestingly, in his research on the CIA, Trevor Barnes discovered a group within the agency that drafted a paper in late 1949 (‘Project Jigsaw’) which argued ‘there was no masterplan for global domination centred in Moscow’—a conclusion ‘so unorthodox’ it was ‘smothered, even within the agency itself. See his ‘The Secret Cold War: The CI A And American Foreign Policy In Europe, 1946–1956. Part IF, The Historical Journal, 25(1982), p. 651.

15 US embassy reports from Moscow can be found on microfilm in Confidential US State Department Central Files: The Soviet Union, 1945–1949 (University Publications of America).

16 The tendency of Western analysts to be constantly pessimistic about the international stiuation became a permanent feature of the Cold War. As I have argued elsewhere, a balanced reading of the 1970s, for example, could have led American strategists to very different conclusions to the exceedingly alarmist ones drawn by those supporting the incoming Reagan administration. See my ‘From Detente to the “Ne w Cold War”: The Crisis of the Cold War System’, Millennium, 13 (1984), pp. 265–91, ‘The Rise and Fall of the “Soviet Threat” ’, Political Studies, 33 (1985), pp. 484–98, ‘Whatever happened to the “Second” Cold War—Soviet-American Relations 1980–1988’, Review of International Studies, 16 (1990), pp. 155–72, and ed., Beyond The Cold War: Superpowers At The Crossroads? (Lanham, 1990).

17 See George F. Kennan, Memoirs: 1925–1950, esp. pp. 397–500.

18 See Tucker, Nancy B., Patterns in the Dust: Chinese-American Relations and the Recognition Controversy (New York, 1983)Google Scholar.

19 Foreign Relations of the United States: 1950, Volume 1, Washington, 1977), p. 160.

20 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, Volume 1, p. 301.

21 For insights into Dean Acheson's policy-making style, see his memoirs Present at the Creation (New York, 1969), esp. pp. 373–81.

22 Hammond, Paul Y., ‘NSC-68: Prologue To Rearmament’, in Warner R. Schilling, Paul Y. Hammond and Glenn H. Snyder, Strategy, Politics and Defense Budgets (New York, 1962), p. 309Google Scholar.

23 Foreign Relations of the United States: 1950, Volume 1, pp. 256–8.

24 Evangelista, Matthew, ‘Stalin's Postwar Army Reappraised’, International Security, 7 (1983), pp. 110–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Nitze, Paul, The Development of NSC 68', International Security, 4 (1980), p. 171Google Scholar.

26 Quoted in Walter Isaacson and Thomas, Evan, The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made (New York, 1986), p. 503Google Scholar.

27 Ambrose, Stephen, Eisenhower: The President (New York, 1985), p. 93Google Scholar.

28 The CIA reports (of which there were two) were entitled ‘The Strategic Value to the USSR of the Conquest of Western Europe and the Near East (to Cairo) prior to 1950’. They can be found in the microfilm collection CIA Research Reports: The Soviet Union, 1946—1976 (University Publications of America).

29 To support her more general thesis about reasonable western fears of likely Soviet aggression ‘against any one of a number of areas in the world’ after 1948, Dr Heuser draws at length upon intelligence assessments of the Yugoslav situation. She emphasizes that at ‘the time of the Berlin blockade, events i n another part of Europe (i.e., Yugoslavia) led to a modification of Western assumptions abou t Soviet intentions elsewhere. Yet, the picture may not have been quite so threatening in the Balkans as Dr Heuser's account seems to suggest. Thus, according to the US ambassador to Yugoslavia (R. Borden Reams), as well as the American military and naval attaches in Belgrade, while only a Soviet-sponsored revolt or a direct attack could dislodge Tito, they saw no evidence of either in June 1948. In September of the same year the CIA accepted that a Soviet invasion could not be dismissed entirely, but concluded that with each month that passed a direct assault upon Yugoslavia became less and less likely. Nothing that occurred in 1949 seemed to change the American's mind; nor did the Korean war it appears, for in July 1950 the CIA again reported that a Soviet offensive against Yugoslavia was highly improbable. Interestingly too, in the critical early years following the Soviet-Yugoslav split, Tito's most urgent request to the US was not for guns to deter a Soviet military invasion, but American equipment and technology to counter the Soviet economic blockade. As late as the beginning of 1951, in fact, the Yugoslavs still declined to ask for American weapons—partly, it is true, so as not to provoke the Russians, but also, one must assume, because they did not view the Soviet threat to their integrity as being primarily military in character. It was only by the middle of 1951 (three years after the original schism) that they finally agreed to accept American military aid. Within two years, of course, Stalin had died and the Soviet-Yugoslav relationship was transformed. See Lorraine Lees, M., ‘The American Decision to Assist Tito, 1948–1949’, Diplomatic History, 2 (Fall 1978), pp. 407–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Henry W. Brands, Jr., ‘Redefining the Cold War: American Policy toward Yugoslavia, 1948–1960’, Diplomatic History, 11 (Winter 1987), pp. 41–53.

30 House of Commons Debates, Vol. 419, 20 February, 1946, cols. 1167–1168.