I'm Tang Tang, a history buff. Welcome everyone to [follow] me, talk about the past and the present, and discuss the general trend of the world. Gentleman I, just to learn and make friends!
The first half of 1950 was also important for U.S. East Asia policy because it was a time when there was a wave of McCarthyism that led to the rhetoric of American policymakers.
1. The incident of "Meiya Magazine".
The original roots of McCarthyism can be traced back to World War II. The American ruling class and a large part of the American public under its influence believed that after the war there would be a world shaped according to the American will.
However, the reality was that the Soviet Union confronted the United States and controlled Eastern Europe, the pro-American governments of many countries were strongly attacked by the Communist Party, and China headed for full-scale civil war. This so-called "win the war, lose the peace" situation caused a strong sense of disillusionment.
Then, the Truman administration pursued a policy of containment. This policy was not to bring down the Soviet power once and for all, but to vigilantly and patiently prevent the Soviet Union from expanding its power until the Soviet regime collapsed or softened, on the premise of long-term coexistence. This means that the United States will bear the material and moral burden of the US-Soviet confrontation for a long time, contrary to its previous national experience of either being alone militarily and politically, or quickly resolving external threats and then returning to "normal."
As with the outcome of World War II, containment policies have frustrated many Americans. In the eyes of these people who lack understanding of world government, the extremely unpleasant situation in which the United States finds itself may well be the result of some kind of conspiracy.
The Truman administration revealed for them the direction of the search conspiracy, albeit unexpectedly.
In the early summer of 1945, the administration created a sensational "American-Asian Magazine Affair", thus giving the impression that the most dangerous enemy was within the government. Conspiracy theories began to become popular when Hurley resigned in November of that year, attacking a group of career diplomats who were pro-CCP.
Then, the Canadian government announced the arrest of a group of scientists and others who had stolen secret information on the atomic bomb for the Soviet Union, and said that similar spy networks existed in the United States, further exacerbating fears in the United States about "Communist subversive and sabotage activities."
In order to prevent the Republicans from exploiting this psychology to make a big deal about partisan politics, Truman took the lead by setting up a presidential commission in November 1946 to consider the question of the loyalty of government employees, and four months later ordered a loyalty investigation of all civilian employees of the administration.
2. The McCarthy incident
From 1948 onwards, the Republican Party, driven by partisan political interests, openly opposed the administration on the issue of "internal security." Under the plot of the party's thug, the House Committee to Investigate Non-American Activities, several former Communist Party members accused certain former government officials (the highest-ranking being Alger Hee, who served as chief of the State Department's Special Political Section and chief adviser to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations) of providing government secrets to the Communist Party.
The Republican Party pursued it with all its might, and used the issue to play on the issue, which made the Democratic administration extremely embarrassed.
The strong shock caused by the outcome of the Chinese Civil War prepared the last basic condition for the rise of McCarthyism.
William Manchester commented:
The collapse of the Kuomintang was an inevitable consequence of China's historical development," which is obvious to the sensible people, but the American public is bewildered...... Everything that American diplomats have achieved in Europe is the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and NATO – seemingly canceled all at once by this catastrophe in Asia. A generous China, grateful for America's generosity and reciprocating kindness, has been replaced by a red troll who seems determined to devour everything.
"A nation that has suffered a serious setback will look for a scapegoat. In 1870, 1914, and 1940, the French in retreat cried out, "There are traitors among us!" The Americans at the turn of the half-century were not immune to this impulse...... As a result, a seismic event on the Asian continent became the most exciting domestic political issue in the United States since the Great Depression. ”
The scapegoats are the so-called Communists and fellow Communist Party members in the US Government, that is, the US China policy that is allegedly formulated under their domination or influence. In the year leading up to McCarthy's performance, some leading figures of the Congressional "China Gang" and the Republican Party shouted that the "pro-communist elements" in the State Department (even Acheson himself) were "helping the Communists conquer China," "plotting to betray the Nationalist Government," and "serving Stalin."
The impulses that Manchester spoke of were close to hysteria.
On February 9, 1950, Joseph McCarthy, the most talented demagogue in American history and the most confident and swift politician who penetrated into the dark corners of the American psyche, came into being.
McCarthyism is, in essence, an insidious assault on America's liberal traditions.
He misjudged the nature of the Chinese Communist Party, underestimated the role of ideology in human affairs and thus the vital influence of communism, failed to perceive the irreconcilable conflicts in society, relied too much on the efficacy of compromise methods, and correspondingly failed to see the need for the use of force, elevated non-interventionism to an overconfident principle, and tended to use American language to boast that much of McCarthy's material was provided by him.
A coalition of McCarthy, the Congressional "China Gang" and the "Foreign Aid China Group" has simply become the most powerful force in American politics.
Under these circumstances, it is difficult to imagine that the administration would adopt a practice that would present McCarthy and his collaborators as evidence of the new "pro-Communist" approach, or persist in a policy that is being accused of being "pro-Communist" for a long time.
Acheson spoke everywhere, "Pleading that he was not degenerate, that he was against communism, that he did not employ traitors. ”
However, he will not fail to know that the most convincing thing is action. It can be said that since McCarthy took the stage, the administration has always had one eye on him and his allies when considering and dealing with East Asian affairs. The McCarthyism was an ultimatum warning the Truman administration that it could no longer retreat in East Asia, and a stimulus to the Truman administration on the path of military intervention.
3. Unreliable "realism"
In order for the United States to make large-scale military intervention on the Asian continent and Taiwan a reality, it is not enough to have changes in the domestic and international environment, but also to have a basic change in the concept of global strategy.
For a long time after the start of the Cold War, the Truman administration pursued a containment strategy known as "realist containment."
The first starting point of this strategy is that the United States has limited power and must be used intensively. In the early post-war period, the demand for a return to "normalcy" was widespread and strong, and the administration cut most of the military and sharply reduced government spending.
This, in turn, has made it clear that resources available for containment are very limited. In July 1948, Deputy Secretary of State Lovett expressed this in a conversation.
He said:
"It has to be done in moderation...... We lack sufficient financial and economic resources to finance the European renaissance at the same time, to supply arms and equipment to all countries or groups of countries that request it, and to strengthen our own military power".
It is therefore important to distinguish and prioritize the interests of the United States in the world, and to determine whether and how much to incur obligations on the basis of the different degrees of demand they place on United States resources and the different opportunities for success in which the consumption of United States resources will be effective.
Western Europe, Germany, and Japan are the most important because they are the only "centers of industrial and military power" in the world outside of the United States and the Soviet Union, and Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and the Western Pacific island chain are also important as their raw material suppliers, transportation arteries, and peripheral strategic zones.
The United States must do everything in its power to prevent hostile forces from taking control of these areas. As for the Asian continent, while the United States should try to influence the situation there, it is not vital and should not be overly obligated to do so.
The second starting point of "realist containment" has to do with the nature of the Soviet threat and the nature of the American response.
The Truman administration believed that the Soviet threat was primarily political and psychological, not military.
The economic devastation caused by the Second World War led to social unrest in the countries of Europe and Asia, and the will, confidence and domestic influence of the pro-American government were declining, which provided the most important and favorable conditions for the expansion of Soviet power.
As for the military aspect, the Soviet Union had neither the intention of waging war nor the ability to win it in the short term.
Therefore, the main means of containment by the United States should be the use of properly used economic assistance as a means of restoring stability in the threatened areas and the confidence of the governments concerned, rather than the expansion of armaments, military deterrence, and military intervention.
In the words of Defense Secretary Forrestal at the end of 1947, it was a "planned adventure" to ensure foreign economic aid with strict control of military spending.
However, the "realism" of the Truman administration was shaky.
4. Threats and fears
Two events in 1949: the Soviet Union's first successful atomic bomb test and the victory of the Chinese Revolution greatly affected its view of the world.
The Soviet Union not only possessed the most powerful conventional force on land, but also possessed nuclear weapons, exposing the United States and its allies to an unprecedented military threat; the emergence of a huge communist country in Asia following the Soviet Union, which threatened to sweep through Southeast Asia; and the serious damage to the prestige and credibility of the United States, which could lead to a chain reaction that would eventually fundamentally change the power structure of the world.
In this way, in the eyes of the Truman administration, the entire "free world" is in unprecedented danger, and this danger is not only political, but also military.
Fear triumphs over reason, and "planned risk-taking" is replaced by the worst-case scenario, and the shock from the strategic periphery seems to blur the distinction between primary and secondary interests due to its psychological effects.
At the same time, under the influence of some Keynesian government advisers, policymakers have come to believe that deficit finances can contribute significantly to economic growth, which in turn can greatly increase government revenues.
The implications of this economics for American foreign and military policy are obvious: the resources available for containment are virtually inexhaustible, and the United States has the ability to contain communist expansion wherever it is threatened by communism, in the way it is needed.
At the end of January 1950, Truman ordered the development of the hydrogen bomb and reconsidered the entire national security policy. Accordingly, Paul Nietzsche, the architect of the new generation of containment policies after Kennan, presided over the drafting, and the State Department and the Department of Defense submitted a report on April 7 -- "US National Security Goals and Programs" (Document No. 68 of the National Security Committee), which marked the beginning of the United States on the path of global interventionism and militarism.
Document 68 of the National Security Committee provides a horrifying description of the world situation. It believes that centuries of maintaining a multipolar international balance of power have changed.
On the one hand, international power was increasingly concentrated in the hands of the two opposing powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, and on the other hand, the Soviet Union was "motivated by a fanatical belief contrary to our own convictions to attempt to impose its own absolute authority on the rest of the world."
Soviet power had grown to such a terrible level that "any further major expansion of Kremlin-ruled areas would create the possibility of an alliance that could be opposed with greater force." ”
This situation, combined with the risk of nuclear war, puts the United States at the peak of its power development and at the most serious danger.
Document No. 68 of the National Security Committee urges that the United States must make a "new and fateful decision" on the basis of the ideological nature of international conflicts and the polarization of international power. It stresses that the essence of current world politics is the confrontation between "free thought" and "slavery thought", "liberal system" and "slavery system", which makes the struggle in the world an inseparable whole, and because of the polarization of world power, they all have a global significance.
5. Document No. 68 on the expansion of armament warfare
The significance of the fate of a country or region to world politics is determined not only by material factors such as its geographical location, natural resources, economic and military power, but also by its psychological effects. Similarly, the actions of the United States in the Cold War had a bearing not only on the world's material balance of power, but also on the world's psychological balance of forces.
Showing weakness anywhere would undermine the prestige and credibility of the United States, "exacerbate the anxiety and defeatism of the entire free world," and encourage "piecemeal aggression" by the Soviet Union and its allies, resulting in a series of "gradual retreats until we find ourselves one day having lost vital positions."
For all these reasons, Document No. 68 of the National Security Council concludes:
"Today's assault on liberal institutions is world-wide, and in the current environment of power polarization, the failure of liberal institutions in any place is its failure everywhere. ”
This is a classic expression of global interventionism. It is tantamount to affirming that the survival of any non-communist government is of paramount importance to the United States, and that it should be fully defended by the United States in the event of a mortal threat.
The document discusses the need for a large-scale build-up of US armaments and opens the way for the militarization of the containment policy.
It believed that the military power of the USSR already posed a serious threat to the "free world". This power, while perhaps not yet considered sufficient by the Soviet Union to wage war between the United States and the Soviet Union, did provide enormous coercive power that could be used in peacetime, allowing the Soviet Union to "threaten its neighbors, support an aggressive foreign policy, and not hesitate to resort to force by proxy under favorable conditions."
The document exclaimed: Compared with the Soviet Union, the United States has a serious shortage of military strength, and this has created a situation in which the Soviet Union is becoming more and more bold and the United States is helpless. Therefore, it is necessary to greatly expand armaments in order to seize the initiative in the Cold War and to prevent the Soviet Union from launching and winning a hot war. The document stresses that the establishment of military superiority over the Soviet Union is the fundamental condition for ensuring the success of the containment policy, otherwise the containment policy is nothing more than a policy of false intimidation.
A significant expansion of armaments requires a rejection of the old notion that the United States has limited resources at its disposal. This is exactly what Document No. 68 of the National Security Committee does.
It reminds that the United States spends much less on defense as a percentage of GDP than on the Soviet Union, while its overall economic capacity is much larger. The problem is not a lack of productivity, but a lack of ideological and policy conservatism to mobilize sufficient resources for national security.
The document confirms that:
"With a high level of economic activity, the United States will soon reach an annual GDP of $300 billion...... Progress in this area will allow (and may itself benefit) the economic and military power of the United States and the free world, and, if a strong economic expansion is achieved, the necessary enhancements can be achieved without degrading the standard of living of the people, since a portion of the annual growth of the gross national product can be extracted to obtain the resources needed. ”
In other words, it is entirely possible that the United States has a very large military machine in peacetime and the ability to intervene wherever and in the way it is needed, as the new concept of containment requires.
NSC Document 68 presents a new phase in the evolution of the U.S. global strategy.
Although Truman did not propose to Congress until after the outbreak of the Korean War a substantial increase in military appropriations, his rapid response to the war showed that he had accepted the basic spirit of NSC Document 68 before the war.
Of his main aides, only Johnson, who remained keen to keep military spending down, opposed the passage of the document, and Acheson was its staunchest and most vocal supporter.
The change in strategic concept represented by this document is of great significance to the US East Asia policy. It makes some of the previously marginal interests in the region critical, and demands a higher price for them, including the massive use of the United States armed forces if necessary.
At the same time, it demonstrates to policymakers that it is possible to eliminate, or at least radically narrow, the gap between U.S. military power and the needs of U.S. interests, making it possible for them to use force with less concern. It can be said that the National Security Committee's Document No. 68 is an indispensable commentary for understanding the subsequent actions of the United States in East Asia.
(End of text)
If you have other topics or opinions about the field of history, you can [follow] me for a private chat, or you can leave a message in the comment area below and reply as soon as possible.