The growth path and decision-making process of the American elite

To understand the growth path and decision-making process of the American elite, you can't avoid these six people: Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, Dean Acheson, John McCloy, George Kennan, and Charles Bohlen. These six people, from childhood and student days, to their early careers on Wall Street and government, have been closely related throughout their lives. In the late period of World War II and after World War II, they established a new world order and assigned a worldwide role to the United States. In the late '40s, they conceived of containment theory and built a series of alliances that have since been the foundation of U.S. policy.

These six men were friends who were proud of holding public office, who navigated between running their own businesses and holding public office, and who became the embodiment of the so-called American power group. Of course, it can also be seen that the revolving door in the United States at that time was very slippery.

They are all staunch capitalists, all of whom believe in unfettered free trade. Some of them have financial capital all over the world. They advocated economic policy as a lever of diplomatic power. They are sincerely disgusted by the Kremlin's totalitarian political tactics and are anxious to prevent its spread.

What they sought to contain was the expansion of the Soviet Union's sphere of influence and territory, believing that the Soviet Union was xenophobic and ever-expanding. Their idea is that the rest of the world should rightly practice the democratic capitalist, liberal values, and economic trade that Westerners enjoy. They viewed the Soviet Union like a businessman looked at his competitors, and concessions and appeasement would not be exchanged for goodwill, but it was possible to reach a realistic ad hoc arrangement that included cooperation on mutually beneficial issues. To tout their ideas about the role the United States should play in the postwar world, they consciously exaggerated the threats they saw. They were accustomed to using the ingenious wrists of merchants.

In April 1945, President Roosevelt died of illness and Truman took over as president. Harriman was the master in the Soviet Union at the time, and Kennan was the embassy counselor. Robert Lovett is assistant secretary of war. Lovett and Harriman were formerly Wall Street partners. Charles Pollan is a liaison between the White House and the State Department. Since then, these six people have become the most powerful people.

Resumes of six people:

Harriman, the son of the founder of the Union Pacific Railroad, had a carefree childhood. Harriman was a typical child of the rich, and his wealthy family and Groton's education helped him easily join Yale's "Skeleton Society." He belonged to the kind of people who were deeply protected by Zuyin, and in the first year of Yale, he was assigned to serve as a member of the youth club, an organization founded by his father. In his second year, he publicly donated 10,000 acres to New York State as park land and donated $1 million. In his fourth year, he was elected to the board of directors of the Union Pacific Railroad, and for the first time he attended a conference, he had a psychology textbook under his arm. Harriman's greatest interest at Yale is the rowing fleet, which is very popular at Yale. Harriman was allowed to become a first-year rowing coach and was allowed to spend six weeks at Oxford to learn British rowing techniques. After President Wilson declared war in April 1917, the United States received a large number of shipbuilding orders from britain, and Harriman purchased the Chester Shipbuilding Company near Philadelphia to expand production capacity. After winning the government's contract to build 40 cargo ships, he formed a merchant ship construction company. After graduating from Yale University, Harriman founded his own shipping company and commercial bank. He then joined the government as a progressive industrialist who supported the "New Deal", was sent by President Roosevelt as a "special envoy" to deal with Churchill and Stalin, and began his career as a traveling diplomat. Because he usually pretends to be sleepy, but at any time there is a possibility of fierce pounces, he gets the nickname "crocodile". His first trip to Russia was in 1899, when he was Tsar Nicholas II, and the last time in 1983. He had a large commercial interest in the Soviet Union.

Lovett was a young man of Harriman, his father was an employee of the Union Pacific Railroad, the right and left arm of the elder Harriman, and later became chairman. Lovett's childhood was unsociable. Lovett had no athletic talent, but talent for singing, dancing and theatrics. He entered Yale University and joined the Skeleton Society with Harriman. Tired of studying and socializing at Yale, he formed a "Navy Support Flight Team Yale Detachment" with more than a dozen friends and began his relationship with the Air Force. In 1917 Lovett's detachment was sent on a mission with the Royal Naval Air Force, where he planned and led a concentrated and continuous night raid plan for a German submarine base, as he noted that 85 percent of German submarines were often in dock at the same time. He survived the war. This experience gave him some clear ideas about the use of air power, which had a great influence on his subsequent push to form a strategic air force bombing capability. After the war, at his father's repeated insistence, he agreed to try Harvard Law School, but the following year he transferred to Harvard Business School because he found law and law school annoying. He is a director of the Union Pacific Railroad and does business on Wall Street. After the Great Depression began, he and Harriman managed to merge the banks owned by Harriman with those funded by brown brothers, which he was a partner in. Then he went to Washington as Assistant Secretary of the Army, still doing things in the same way as he did on Wall Street, cautiously hiding behind the scenes. He made a first-class contribution to the U.S. entry into the era of a strategic air force power. During the initial showdown of the Cold War, he served as deputy secretary of state and was the principal administrator of the State Department. He later served as Minister of Defence.

McCloy McCloy was a poor child from Philadelphia who lost his father at the age of 6, but he had a strong, capable mother who was determined to raise her son into a successful person. His mother took pains to get her son to take over a good education and encouraged her son to expand his contact area through part-time work, so he tutored his wives very early and contacted the rich family. The most important thing he learned in middle school was the philosophy and habit of "competing with the masters", which is now called growth thinking. Working as a part-time worker has taught him to listen, respect and get along with people. This was the key to his great influence in the future, his ability to make everyone he dealt with think that he was expressing his opinion, and because he was good at not getting others into trouble, "trustworthy person" became synonymous with him. Because he is good at listening to opinions and does not need to argue and argue to guide people to make decisions, McIlroy is considered to be the most intelligent person. McIlroy was a strong student and athletic, and in middle school developed a rare lifelong habit of having a "reading debate" with himself: choosing books with different perspectives on a topic and reading them at the same time. He entered Harvard Law School as he wished, during which he briefly participated in World War I. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he entered Wall Street because the atmosphere of competition with the masters was deeply attracted to him. He has repeatedly declined to hold cabinet positions, preferring to spend most of his life as one of the most influential "civilians." In fact, it was harvard law school experience that led him to the classroom, becoming a member of the American power group he admired, and later becoming a representative of this power group. After graduation, he became a lawyer on Wall Street, earning the trust of American tycoons. Both he and Lovett were honored by Stimson sorod, who helped him manage the War Department. In 1951, McCloy, as the top executive civilian in Germany, was more concerned with making Germany strong enough to resist the Soviet Union. McIlroy later became President of the World Bank and High Commissioner to Germany, as well as Chairman of Chase Bank and Chairman of the Committee on External Relations. McIlroy is one of the most characteristic examples of American social structure: the american upper class will not only accept those born in that class, but also those who are eager to accept the cultivation of the upper class.

Note: Stimson, an American politician and Wall Street lawyer, served as Secretary of War under President Taft and Secretary of War under President Roosevelt, and Secretary of State to President Hoover.

Acheson: Acheson came from a middle-class family, and after graduating from groton Preparatory, an elite school at the time, in the summer of graduation, the young Acheson went to the railroad engineering team for a summer job, a job that honed Acheson's character. In the first year of Yale University, Harriman was recruited by Harriman to be a coach in the freshman rowing team, and Harriman was the person we introduced earlier. After Yale, he entered Harvard Law School, where he realized that it was not possible for Hangerlang to study locally and began to be angry about his knowledge. Acheson devoted himself to the study of law, developed a strong logical thinking, analytical and precise ability, and learned that "every problem has no ready-made solution, and the decisions made are the result of analyzing the facts and arguing the facts painstakingly." In his youth he developed a superior insight: the evolution of law is a mirror of the economic and philosophical forces that regulate society; and when these forces change, so should laws. This is similar to the political economy insight that the economic base determines the superstructure. A professor at Harvard Law School, Flix Frankfort, was a big influence on Acheson. Under Frank Ford's tutelage, Acheson developed a great interest in the relationship between legal issues and socio-economic issues. Acheson was even curious about the writings of Karl Marx. He was elected to the board of directors of the Harvard Law Review. After leaving Harvard, Acheson enlisted in the Navy, but soon the war was over and he returned to Harvard. One day, then-Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis asked Frank Ford to introduce him to a clever and resourceful law student as his clerk. Frank Ford recommended Acheson. Acheson showed his shrewdness in this matter, and he asked Frank Ford to help him clarify the career path that this opportunity would bring him. Acheson then left New England and went to Washington to start a new life. After two years as a clerk and as a private secretary for Brandeis, Acheson was introduced by Brandeis to the Covington Berlin and Rubley law firm in Washington, D.C., where he served the Morgan Group and devoted himself to Democratic politics. Through the Morgan Consortium, he became acquainted with Truman and maintained a good relationship with him. When Truman became president in 1945, he regarded Acheson as his confidant.

George Kennan: He lost his mother at an early age, his father was a tax lawyer, and his stepmother was not very kind to her, so to speak, Kennan did not get much love from his father and stepmother. Kennan was a shy child with medium family assets and social status. When Kennan was a child, he often had minor illnesses, his personality was more melancholy, and his enterprising spirit was not strong. He was basically raised by his three older sisters. Kennan loves to read, and on holidays, he hides in a hut in the attic of his home, a local reading old book on the shelf. His English was good, but not in mathematics and the natural sciences, and apparently he was a liberal arts student. Fo Scott Fitzgerald's novel This Side of Heaven influenced him, making him determined to go to Princeton and break into this world of power and fame. At that time, the United States entered a new era of competition, and a good college education, like birth and preparatory school, was very important in determining a person's social status. At this time, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, beginning to be considered the best institutions of higher learning in the country, were an important step on the American ladder. Kennan, like McIlroy, spent his life obsessed with what he saw as the American elite. But Kennan, unlike McIlroy, has mixed ambivalence about the elite selected for the United States. He said he liked to be an outsider, but it was important to be an outsider inside. It may have been the family circumstances of his childhood that made him a less sociable person.

Pollen: Chip Pollan graduated from São Paulo and enrolled at Harvard Law School in 1923. What Pollen is best at is making friends. As a result of reading Ten Days That Shook the World, Pollen, excited by the enthusiasm and power of the Bolshevik experiment, became interested in Marxism. Pollan had no interest in being a lawyer or going to Wall Street, believing that it was "an inappropriate form of bondage." When he graduated, he became a sailor and traveled to northeast China (then Manchuria) and Calcutta. After returning home, a relative arranged for him to meet with Assistant Secretary of State William Castle, a conversation that led him to finally decide to become a diplomat.

American Power Group:

British journalist Henry Fairley first made the term "power group" a household name in a 1955 essay describing a group of powerful people who ruled Britain. The key figure in the power clique of that era was McIlroy, who, despite his poor philadelphia background and repeatedly declined to hold cabinet positions, preferring to spend most of his life as one of the most influential "commoners." In fact, it was harvard law school experience that led him to the classroom, becoming a member of the American power group he admired, and later becoming a representative of this power group. After graduation, he became a lawyer on Wall Street, earning the trust of American tycoons. Both he and Lovett were honored by Stimson sorod, who helped him manage the War Department. McIlroy later became President of the World Bank and High Commissioner to Germany, as well as Chairman of Chase Bank and Chairman of the Committee on External Relations.

The resurgence of this power group in the 20th century began with an international group of people who served as woodrow Wilson's informal think tank at the Versailles Conference and formed the Committee on Foreign Relations upon their return. The founder of this system was Elihu Lutter, Secretary of War to President McKinley and Secretary of State to President Roosevelt. Stimson regarded Rut as a mentor, and Stimson later became a mentor to McIlroy and Lovett, among others.

The president of the United States and his three top cabinet positions: secretary of state, secretary of defense, and secretary of the treasury, are all inextricably linked to the U.S. monopoly consortium. In the United States, there is a tradition for Wall Street partners to serve as defense secretary. The U.S. Secretary of State plays an important role in the Department of State and is a key and pivotal point in foreign policy. The Secretary of State speaks through the Press Club, from which the Secretary of State can judge the secretary's diplomatic focus, that is, where important interests of the United States are at stake. Embassies are U.S. intelligence agencies and eyeliners in foreign countries.

U.S. think tanks, power blocs, and decisions about North Korea:

According to the contents of the book, we can do a little historical restoration and analysis from the perspective of the United States. My reduction and analysis is mainly based on the historical data of the main decision makers in the United States at that time. First, the United States was unprepared for North Korea to attack South Korea, in part because then-Secretary of State Acheson believed that the Korean Peninsula was not in america's vital interest, and because intelligence work was completely dysfunctional. At the time, the CIA was still small and ill-organized. At that time, the main decision-makers and influencers were a new generation of power groups represented by Acheson. Most of them were internationalists, and at that time, the international faction was the European faction, or the Atlantic faction, advocating that the United States get out of the historical habit of isolationism, assume greater responsibility in the international community, and establish the international status of the United States after World War II and major international alliances and organizations. They saw Korea as an agent of the Soviet Union, and that this "aggression" was like a historical reenactment of Japan's aggression against Northeast China (Manchuria) and an early warning sign leading to a world war. The psychology of the United States at the time was that if it did not act, the United States would disappoint its allies, damage the prestige of the United States, and tempt the Soviet Union to take further risky actions. At the time, U.S. Secretary of State Acheson believed that North Korea could not be stopped without force, and that only the United States could do it. He believes that in the face of challenges, we cannot retreat, because this will greatly damage the prestige and strength of the United States, and here we can see that at a historical moment, the personality of key decision-makers has a major impact on the direction of history. June 24, 1950, was a Saturday when war broke out. The U.S. decision to enter the war was made on Sunday. According to Acheson afterwards, the decision to go to war was made to save Europe's allies. At the time, in the temporary operational command room, it was Secretary of State Acheson, not Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, nor General Omar Brad, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At that time, opinions were very united, and the United States had to intervene to save South Korea from the Communists. Because the voices calling for intervention were so strong at the time, the U.S. government received so much support that it did not pass a resolution or declare war in Congress. Secretary of State Acheson advised Truman not to seek congressional approval, persuading that time was the deciding factor and that the government should not get bogged down in hearings or small talk. This sowed the seeds for Congress to lash out at the "Truman War" when the U.S. war in North Korea was unfavorable a few months later, and it also set a bad precedent for the U.S. president to later exercise power in the Vietnam War. Six days later, on June 30, Truman ordered U.S. troops to march into Korea.

On September 15, U.S. troops landed at Inchon, and the North Korean army was quickly defeated. On October 3, Premier Zhou Enlai, through India's ambassador to China, Paniga, told U.S. Secretary of State Acheson that China would have to intervene if U.S. troops crossed the 38th Parallel and pushed north. Acheson believes that this is just China's intimidation, which is the most important strategic judgment error of the US government.

The entire decision-making process of the Americans did not consider China as an independent party, but put China in the shadow of the Soviet Union. In August 1950, a U.S. State Department drafted a document calling for the crossing of the 38th parallel for the purpose of the U.S. war, arguing that "the possibility of Chinese intervention exists, but it is not very large." At that time, there was only one person who maintained a certain degree of sobriety, and he was the designer of the Cold War, George Kennan. Kennan warned of the dangers that existed and proposed to split the Soviet Union and China by bringing China into the United Nations, which was actually the origin of Nixon's initiative to contact China more than 20 years later.

There is no doubt about the major defeat suffered by the United States in North Korea, as the book reinforces. The significance for China is that the decision-making of major historical events is a dynamic process and has a major global cascading effect – often in a form that is beyond the imagination of the parties concerned. For example, this major event in North Korea contributed to Europe's self-reliance.

So, will today's Russian-Ukrainian conflict lead to Europe's self-reliance?