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Harry Truman: Philosophy Harry S. Truman never really expected to be president, and nowhere was his lack of preparedness more evident than in his foreign policy. Truman's foreign policy was really an extension of Wilson's and F.D.R.’s policies. His actions were shaped more by the incidents he faced and his personal advisors than any guidelines he set forth. Truman, initially strove to continue Franklin Roosevelt's legacy of holding the Allies together. By the end of his first term, however, every vestige of wartime harmony had vanished. The United States and the Soviet Union were now facing off against one another in the very heart of Europe. (Kissinger 424). But soon, their conflict would be worldwide. The Cold War was caused by the conflicting interests of the United States and the U.S.S.R., compounded by miscommunication and poor diplomacy. The differences in the cultures of the American political leaders and the their moral and righteous justifications for diplomacy from Soviet leaders' communist expansionist policies lead to the unraveling of the new international order nearly established in Roosevelt's wartime conferences with Churchill and Stalin. (Kissinger 438). The official sentiments of the United States government regarding the Soviet Union in the postwar world was best exemplified in the National Security Council document NSC-68: “... a defeat of the free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere. The shock we sustained in the destruction of Czechoslovakia was not in the measure of Czechoslovakia's material importance to us. In a material sense, her capabilities were already at Soviet disposal. But when the integrity of Czechoslovakia institutions was destroyed, it was in the intangible scale of values that we registered a loss more damaging than the material loss we had already suffered. (Kissinger 462).” In 1947, an American diplomat in Moscow, George F. Kennan, sent what became known as the “Long Telegram” to Washington. In his message, Kennan outlined his theory that the Soviet Union was an imperial power bent on expanding its sphere of influence. To counter this, Kennan recommended the basis of containment policy: resisting Soviet advances wherever they were. By this time, wartime good faith had evaporated, and Kennan’s document became the basis for Truman’s policies. Thus, Truman’s policies had to shift from one of trying to maintain an alliance between the United States and the Soviets to one of unremitting hostility to Soviet moves. |
Philosophy
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