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² Leading revisionist writers include, among others, Barton Bernstein, Thomas Paterson, Lloyd Gardner, Gabriel Kolko, Gar Alperovitz, and W. A. Williams. Kirkendall, Richard S., ed., The Truman Period as a Research Field (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1967)Google Scholar, and The Truman Period as a Research Field: A Reappraisal, 1972 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1974)Google Scholar provide good surveys of the debate between revisionist and traditional historians. Criticisms of revisionist writing may be found in Maier, Charles S., “Revisionism and the Interpretation of Cold War Origins,” Perspectives in American History, 4 (1970), 313–47Google Scholar; Richardson, J. L., “Cold-War Revisionism: A Critique,” World Politics, 24 (07 1972), 579–612Google Scholar; Smith, Geoffrey S., “‘Harry, We Hardly Know You’: Revisionism, Politics, and Diplomacy, 1945–1954,” American Political Science Review, 70 (06 1976), 560–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kimball, Warren F., “The Cold War Warmed Over,” American Historical Review, 89 (10 1974), 1119–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maddox, Robert J., The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; and, notably, Tucker, Robert W., The Radical Left and American Foreign Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971)Google Scholar. Although I have some disagreements with his work, which I shall offer below, the finest nonrevisionist analysis of cold war foreign policy is that of Gaddis, John Lewis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War: 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972)Google Scholar; also his “Harry S. Truman and the Origins of Containment,” in Makers of American Diplomacy from Benjamin Franklin to Henry Kissinger, ed. Merli, Frank J. and Wilson, Theodore A. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1974), pp. 493–522Google Scholar. The most comprehensive and generally sympathetic treatment of the Truman administration is contained in Donovan, Robert J., Conflict and Crisis: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945–1948 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1977)Google Scholar; and Tumultuous Years: The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1949–1953 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1982)Google Scholar Some favorable assessments of Truman's statesmanship are Kirkendall, Richard S., “Harry Truman,” in America's Eleven Greatest Presidents, ed. Borden, Morton, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1971), pp. 255–88Google Scholar; Rossiter, Clinton, The American Presidency, rev. ed. (New York: New American Library, 1960), chap. 5Google Scholar; and O'Connor, Raymond G., “Harry S. Truman: New Dimensions of Power,” in Powers of the President in Foreign Affairs, 1945–1965, ed. Robinson, Edgar E. (San Francisco: Commonwealth Club of California, 1966), pp. 17–76.Google Scholar

³ Bernstein, Barton J., “American Foreign Policy and the Cold War,” in Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration, ed. Bernstein, Barton J. (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970), p. 60.Google Scholar

⁴ See Bernstein, Barton J., “The Limitations of the Liberal Vision,” in The Truman Years: The Reconstruction of Postwar America, ed. Huthmacher, J. Joseph (Hinsdale: Dryden Press Inc., 1972), pp. 99–122Google Scholar. In the same volume compare Neustadt, Richard E., “Extending the Horizons of Democratic Liberalism,” pp. 77–98.Google Scholar

⁵ Maaranen, Steven A. “The Struggle for a New World Order: The Foreign Policy of the British Left, 1932–1939”, in Statesmanship: Essays in Honor of Sir Winston Spencer Churchill, ed. Jaffa, Harry V. (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1981), p. 212Google Scholar. This collection of essays in honor of Truman's great contemporary offers invaluable insight into the subject of statesmanship.

⁶ Dannhauser, Werner, “Reflections on Statesmanship and Bureaucracy,” in Bureaucrats, Policy Analysts, Statesmen: Who Leads?, ed. by Goldwin, Robert A. (Washington: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1980), p. 118Google Scholar. This book offers a rich understanding of statesmanship.

⁷ Luttwak, Edward N., The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983), p. 2Google Scholar. On the role of Marxist-Leninist ideology in Soviet policy see also Pipes, Richard, U.S.-Soviet Relations in the Era of Détente (Boulder: Westview Press, 1981), chaps. 7–8Google Scholar; Kissinger, Henry, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), pp. 114–25Google Scholar; and Wildavsky, Aaron, ed., Beyond Containment: Alternative American Policies Toward the Soviet Union (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1983), esp. chaps. 2–4 and 9.Google Scholar

⁸ Bohlen, Charles E., The Transformation of American Foreign Policy (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1969), pp. 21, 49–50.Google Scholar

⁹ Truman, Harry S., Memoirs: Year of Decisions (New York: New American Library, 1955)Google Scholar, see chaps. 14 and 19 on the postwar occupation zone issue. A discussion of the issue is also contained in Haynes, Richard F., The Awesome Power: Harry S. Truman as Commander in Chief (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), chap. 3.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Quoted in Gaddis, , The United States and the Origins of the Cold War: 1941–1947, p. 209.Google Scholar

¹¹ Bernstein, Barton J. and Matusow, Allen J., eds., The Truman Administration: A Documentary History (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1966), pp. 166, 168.Google Scholar

¹² Quoted in Truman, , Memoirs: Year of Decisions, p. 241.Google Scholar

¹³ Ibid., p. 244.

¹⁴ Churchill, Winston S., Triumph and Tragedy, vol. 6: The Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1953), 608.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Ibid., pp. 602–603.

¹⁶ Truman, , Memoirs: Year of Decisions, p. 274.Google Scholar

¹⁷ For Truman's views on the U N see Memoirs: Year of Decisions, chap. 18; also Koenig, Louis W., ed., The Truman Administration: Its Principles and Practice (New York: New York University Press, 1956), pp. 262–72.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Truman, , Memoirs: Year of Decisions, pp. 302, 311.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Koenig, , The Truman Administration, p. 268.Google Scholar

²⁰ Truman, Harry S., Truman Speaks (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 61.Google Scholar

²¹ Acheson, Dean, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1969), pp. 727, 732.Google Scholar

²² Truman, Harry S., Memoirs: Years of Trial and Hope (New York: New American Library, 1956)Google Scholar, chap. 7 discusses the Greek-Turkish crisis. An excellent account of the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan by an insider, capturing the political atmosphere at home and abroad, is provided by Jones, Joseph M., The Fifteen Weeks (02 21–06 5, 1947) (New York: Viking Press, 1955)Google Scholar. John Lewis Gaddis argues that the Truman Doctrine did not represent a new departure in American foreign policy, but that its limited aim of restoring the European balance of power mainly through economic and political support was in line with American policy since 1917. Gaddis is right that we fought World War I to restore the European balance of power, but the purpose of the League of Nations and the U N was to abolish balance of power politics; moreover, between the wars we avoided involvement in the European balance, and after World War II we did not think we would have to do anything about it until the critical years of 1947–49. See his “Harry S. Truman and the Origins of Containment”; and “Was the Truman Doctrine a Real Turning Point?” Foreign Affairs, 52 (01 1974), 386–402.Google Scholar

²³ Jones, , The Fifteen Weeks, p. 272.Google Scholar

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Truman, , Truman Speaks, p. 37.Google Scholar

²⁷ Truman, , Memoirs: Years of Trial and Hope, p. 263Google Scholar. Fellow-travelers then and revisionists later regarded the Truman Doctrine as an example of U.S. imperialism, but few serious men deny that it addressed a legitimate, vital interest. Some reasonable men have, however, faulted Truman's emphasis on the philosophical conflict with communism for fostering a simple, rigid view of the cold war that hindered future accommodation with the Soviets and leading after 1950 to an indiscriminate, global containment that failed to distinguish between vital and peripheral interests. See Donovan, , Conflict and CrisisGoogle Scholar, chap. 30; also, in addition to his other works cited above, Gaddis, John Lewis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar, chap. 3. This point of view reflects a positivist understanding of the national interest in material terms and assumes the Soviet Union is an ordinary nation-state with limited ambitions and with whom a genuinely peaceful accommodation can be struck. Gaddis says the conflict of “two ways of life” referred to totalitarianism and democracy, not communism and capitalism, suggesting communism is not inherently totalitarian and expansionist, given the power and opportunity.

²⁸ Quoted in Donovan, , Conflict and Crisis, p. 287.Google Scholar

²⁹ For my understanding of Lincoln I am indebted to Jaffa, Harry V., Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1959)Google Scholar; and Fehrenbacher, Don E., Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850's (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1964)Google Scholar for a different but complementary perspective.

³⁰ Current, Richard N., ed., The Political Thought of Abraham Lincoln (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1967), p. 111.Google Scholar

³¹ Jones, , The Fifteen Weeks, p. 271.Google Scholar

³² Ibid.

³³ Current, , Political Thought of Abraham Lincoln, p. 38.Google Scholar

³⁴ Churchill, Winston S., The Grand Alliance, vol. 3: The Second World War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1950), 370.Google Scholar

³⁵ See Acheson's statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 24 March, 1947, in Jones, , The Fifteen Weeks, p. 190.Google Scholar

³⁶ Quoted in Donovan, , Tumultuous Years, p. 176.Google Scholar

³⁷ Current, , Political Thought of Abraham Lincoln, p. 46.Google Scholar

³⁸ Ibid., p. 322.

³⁹ de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, ed. Bradley, Phillips (New York: Vintage Books, 1945), 2:129–30.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ See Jones, , The Fifteen WeeksGoogle Scholar; Donovan, , Conflict and Crisis, chap. 30Google Scholar. An account of the Marshall Plan's evolution is contained in Mallalieu, William C., “The Origin of the Marshall Plan: A Study in Policy Formation and National Leadership,” Political Science Quarterly, 73 (12 1958), 481–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A description of the administration's adroit handling of Congress is given by Quade, Quentin L., “The Truman Administration and Separation of Powers: The Case of the Marshall Plan,” Review of Politics, 27 (01 1965), 58–77Google Scholar. Gimbel, John, The Origins of the Marshall Plan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976)Google Scholar analyzes a mountain of evidence without finding a meaningful link between the Marshall Plan and American foreign policy. Truman discusses the Plan in Memoirs: Years of Trial and Hope, chap. 8. See also Acheson, , Present at the Creation, chap. 26.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Truman, , Memoirs: Year of Decisions, p. 364.Google Scholar

⁴² The texts of Undersecretary of State Acheson's speech before the Delta Council in Cleveland, Mississippi, on 8 May 1947, and Secretary of State Marshall's announcement of the European Recovery Program at Harvard University on 5 June 1947, are contained in Jones, , The Fifteen Weeks, pp. 274–84Google Scholar; see also the bipartisan report of the President's Committee on Foreign Aid endorsing the ERP in Bernstein, and Matusow, , eds., The Truman Administration, pp. 263–75.Google Scholar

⁴³ Koenig, , The Truman Administration, p. 304.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Arkes, Hadley, Bureaucracy, the Marshall Plan, and the National Interest (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972)Google Scholar. Arkes rejects the positivist view that the “national interest” is an empirical term without moral content and that “ideals” are incompatible with “self-interest.” He subtly analyzes the kinds of interests involved in the Marshall Plan and demonstrates the connection between the character of the American regime and its interests in foreign policy.

⁴⁵ Ibid., p. 344.

⁴⁶ Ibid., p. 342.

⁴⁷ Truman discusses NATO in Memoirs: Years of Trial and Hope, chap. 17; see also Acheson, , Present at the Creation, chap. 31Google Scholar. Kaplan, Lawrence A., “The United States and the Origins of NATO, 1946–1949,” Review of Politics, 31 (04 1969), 210–22Google Scholar, offers useful background, emphasizing the major departure in foreign policy represented by NATO.

⁴⁸ See Gardner, Lloyd C., “Truman Era Foreign Policy: Recent Historical Trends,” in Kirkendall The Truman Period as a Research Field: A Reappraisal, 1972, pp. 47–74Google Scholar. Gardner is vexed by the indivisibility of the political and military aspects of containment.

⁴⁹ McCloy, John J., The Atlantic Alliance: Its Origin and Its Future (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 23.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Ibid., p. 25.

⁵¹ Ibid., p. 27.

⁵² Truman, , Memoirs: Year of Decisions, p. 560Google Scholar. For discussion of demobilization and related issues of national security see Donovan, , Tumultuous Years, chaps. 5 and 12Google Scholar; Haynes, , The Awesome Power, chap. 8Google Scholar; and, especially, Huntington, Samuel P., The Common Defense: Strategic Programs in National Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), chaps. 4–5.Google Scholar

⁵³ An account of the genesis of NSC-68 is found in Hammond, Paul Y., “NSC-68: Prologue to Rearmament,” in Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets, ed. Schilling, Warner R., Hammond, Paul Y., and Snyder, Glenn H. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 267–378.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ “NSC-68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security,” in Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945–1950, ed. Etzold, Thomas H. and Gaddis, John Lewis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), p. 387.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Ibid., p. 386.

⁵⁶ See Gaddis, , Strategies of Containment, chap. 4Google Scholar. Gaddis, John Lewis, “The Rise, Fall and Future of Detente,” Foreign Affairs, 62 (Winter 1983–1984), 354–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, analyzes the various forms of containment from Truman to Reagan. Because he disregards the ideological character of the Soviet regime he attributes our continued failure to resolve disputes with Russia to a fear of weakening public support for containment. But if the Soviet Union is not radically different from other nation-states, it is hard to see the point of the whole struggle.

⁵⁷ Bohlen, , The Transformation of American Foreign Policy, p. 96.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Ibid., pp. 96–97.

⁵⁹ Kissinger, , White House Years, p. 115.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See Gaddis, John Lewis and Nitze, Paul, “NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat Reconsidered,” International Security, 4 (Spring 1980), 164–76.Google Scholar

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