Fear Itself (110 page)

78
For a thoughtful overview, see Campbell,
The United States in World Affairs, 1945–1947,
pp. 391–99.

79
Bernard Brodie, ed.,
The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946). The other contributors were Percy E. Corbett, Frederick Dunn, William T. R. Fox, and Arnold Wolfers.

80
Chicago Daily Tribune,
August 29, 1946.

81
Washington Post,
June 5, 1947.

82
In 1974, the official spelling was changed to Enewetak to better reflect local pronunciation. Sixteen years later, in 2000, the people of the atoll were awarded some $340 million by the Marshall Island Nuclear Claims Tribunal for the harms they had incurred as a result of the nuclear tests that had been conducted between 1948 and 1958.

83
Washington Post,
December 2, 1947.

84
“The Eternal Apprentice,”
Time,
November 8, 1948, p. 71.

85
J. Robert Oppenheimer, “International Control of Atomic Energy,”
Foreign Affairs
(1948): 240, 241, 243, 244, 248, 250–51, 249, 252.

86
For a consideration of these issues, see James M. Lindsay, “Congress, Foreign Policy, and the New Institutionalism,”
International Studies Quarterly
38 (1994): 281–304.

87
For a discussion, see Samuel P. Huntington,
The Soldier and the State
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 324–25.

88
This is the central theme of the magisterial treatment of congressional debates about global affairs by Michael J. Hogan,
A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

89
William Frye, “The National Military Establishment,”
American Political Science Review
43 (1949): 544; Charles Merriam, “Security without Militarism: Preserving Civilian Control in American Political Institutions,” in
Civil-Military Relationships in American Life,
ed. Jerome G. Kerwin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948) pp. 156–72.

90
Congressional Record
, 80th Cong., 1st sess., July 19, 1947, p. 9414.

91
Ibid., 81st Cong., 1st sess., August 2, 1949, p. 10603.

92
During the 80th Congress, analyzed by Peter Trubowitz in just this way, the states that recorded more than 87 percent support for the administration’s program included Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. Only three nonsouthern states—Arizona, New Mexico, and Rhode Island—exhibited this very high degree of backing. The next tier of at least two-thirds support included the delegations from Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, and Tennessee. In all, the South dominated the internationalist bloc. See Peter Trubowitz,
Defining the National Interest: Conflict and Change in American Foreign Policy
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 185–90.

93
The speech, delivered in Towson, Maryland, on November 28, 1947, is cited in Jonathan Bell,
The Liberal State on Trial
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 51.

94
For an overview of comparatively low Republican cohesion in foreign affairs in the 81st Congress, see David B. Truman,
The Congressional Party: A Case Study
(New York: Wiley, 1959), pp. 78–82.

95
Congressional Record
, 80th Cong., 1st sess., July 16, 1947, p. 9110.

96
Letter from Harold Knutson to Robert Taft, November 3, 1947; cited in Bell,
The Liberal State on Trial,
p. 91.

97
Chicago Daily Tribune,
February 9, 1945.

98
Cited in Robert David Johnson,
Congress and the Cold War
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 20.

99
Irwin F. Gellman,
The Contender, Richard Nixon: The Congress Years, 1946–1952
(New York: Free Press, 1999), pp. 120–23.

100
The most important role within the Republican Party to manage these wings and maintain a significant degree of foreign policy bipartisanship fell to Senator Taft, a potential presidential nominee in both 1948 and 1952. For discussions, see Vernon Van Dyke and Edward Lane Davis, “Senator Taft and American Security,”
Journal of Politics
14 (1952): 177–202; William S. White,
The Taft Story
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1954); and James T. Patterson,
Mr. Republican: A Biography of Robert A. Taft
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972).

101
Hogan,
A Cross of Iron
, p. 100.

102
Cited in Julian E. Zelizer,
Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security—From World War II to the War on Terrorism
(New York: Basic Books, 2010), p. 66.

103
They did so with high likeness on roll calls that concerned defense, geopolitics, and international political economy, scoring 89 in the House and 90 in the Senate. By contrast, Democrats and Republicans, in aggregate, voted together with lower likeness, scoring 63 in the House and 60 in the Senate.

104
Wallace effectively broke with the administration by denouncing its “Get tough with Russia” policy at a National Citizens Political Action Committee (NCPAC) rally in New York on September 12, 1946. This was the key paragraph:

To achieve lasting peace, we must study in detail just how the Russian character was formed—by invasions of Tartars, Mongols, Germans, Poles, Swedes, and French; by the czarist rule based on ignorance, fear and force; by the intervention of the British, French and Americans in Russian affairs from 1919 to 1921; by the geography of the huge Russian land mass situated strategically between Europe and Asia; and by the vitality derived from the rich Russian soil and the strenuous Russian climate. Add to all this the tremendous emotional power which Marxism and Leninism gives to the Russian leaders—and then we can realize that we are reckoning with a force which cannot be handled successfully by a “Get tough with Russia” policy. “Getting tough” never bought anything real and lasting—whether for schoolyard bullies or businessmen or world powers. The tougher we get, the tougher the Russians will get.

See http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw28.htm. NCPAC was listed as a subversive organization by HUAC after its participation in the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace, arranged by the Communist Party USA, which was held from March 25 to 27, 1949, at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Wallace resigned his post as secretary of commerce at the president’s request on September 20, 1945.

105
Robert Jervis, “The End of the Cold War on the Cold War?,”
Diplomatic History
17 (1993): 658.

106
Zelizer,
Arsenal of Democracy,
p. 68.

107
Huntington,
The Common Defense,
pp. 16–17, 15. Writing on October 5, 1947, about “the kind of containment we need,” I. F. Stone argued that “the ‘containment’ we need for world peace” is a recognition “that socialism is coming everywhere” by the “neurotic . . . American capitalist class,” a group that possesses “almost hysterical fears.” On November 23, 1947, Stone sought to counter the growing East-West split by arguing against the assumption that “Russian control in Eastern Europe, as in the USSR itself, is based merely on ruthless terror.” See I. F. Stone,
The Truman Era, 1945–1952: A Nonconformist History of Our Times
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1953), pp. 42, 41, 32–33.

108
This information is drawn from the annual publication of the
Official Congressional Directory,
published by the U.S. Government Printing Office at the start of each congressional session.

109
“Defense Boom in Dixie,”
Time,
February 17, 1941, pp. 75–80.

110
Dewey W. Grantham,
The South in Modern America: A Region at Odds
(New York: HarperCollins, 1994), pp. 170–75; see also George Brown Tindall,
The Emergence of the New South, 1913–1945
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967), pp. 694–704.

111
Brenda Gayle Plummer,
Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); John David Skrentny, “The Effect of the Cold War on African American Civil Rights: America and the World Audience, 1945–1968,”
Theory and Society
27 (1998): 237–85; Mary L. Dudziak,
Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002); Carol Anderson,
Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Thomas Borstelmann,
The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).

112
The phrase is from Glenda Gilmore’s
Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2008), where it serves as the title of chapter 2.

113
Robert E. Cushman, “Civil Liberties in an Atomic Age,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
249 (1947): 61.

114
Congressional Record,
80th Cong., 1st sess., July 19, 1947, p. 9412.

115
Ibid., July 7, 1947, p. 8299.

116
Ibid., July 19, 1947, p. 9427.

117
“It was obvious,” a classic study has recalled, “that in the future management of this appalling new force, political and military considerations must be closely integrated. But there was absolutely no existing pattern to indicate how this might be accomplished.” See Walter Millis,
Arms and the State: Civil-Military Elements in National Policy
(New York: Twentieth-Century Fund, 1958), p. 143.

118
The pivotal moment for the scientific community came at a conference held at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, on June 19 and 20, 1951, where consensus was reached on the technical aspects of a thermonuclear device. One of the bomb’s key developers and advocates, Edward Teller, later recalled both the ingenious science that preceded and followed this meeting and how “everyone who worked on the hydrogen bomb was appalled by its success and by its possible consequences,” yet “was driven by the knowledge that the work was necessary for the safety of our country.” See Teller,
The Legacy of Hiroshima,
pp. 52–53, 56.

119
Laurence,
Dawn over Zero,
p. 272.

120
See http://universityhonors.umd.edu/HONR269J/archive/Truman451003.htm. Truman was able to draw on wartime planning on how to regulate atomic weapons after the war. The first sketch was produced by Vannevar Bush, then director of the Office for Emergency Management at the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), and James Conant, Harvard University’s president and a key player in the Manhattan Project. “Their plan consisted of a twelve-man commission on atomic energy that would regulate all transfers of special nuclear materials, the construction of production plants, and all nuclear experiments. The commission would consist of five scientists or engineers appointed by the National Academy of Science, three other civilians appointed by the president, and two army and two navy officers.” See Peter Douglas Feaver,
Guarding the Guardians: Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons in the United States
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 90.

121
William S. White, “Bill for Atomic Control Is Expedited in Congress,”
New York Times,
October 14, 1945.

122
Truman,
Memoirs,
vol.
2
, p. 2. This course was consistent with the Manhattan Project, an army operation directed by an army leader.

123
Cited in Millis,
Arms and the State,
p. 162.

124
Donald J. Kevles,
The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), p. 151; Marquis Childs, “Washington Calling: Atoms during Peace,”
Washington Post,
January 9, 1946. Childs wrote five influential, much-discussed articles in early January that argued the case against military control of atomic energy.

125
Daniel Bell, “The Great Science Debate,”
Fortune,
June 1946, p. 116. This was the first article Bell, a sociologist, wrote for the magazine.

126
Howard A. Meyerhoff, “Domestic Control of Atomic Energy,”
Science
103 (1946): 133.

127
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin,
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), p. 326.

128
New York Times,
October 31, 1945.

129
Cited in Millis,
Arms and the State,
p. 166.

130
Truman,
Memoirs,
vol. 2, p. 3. The
Wall Street Journal
objected, calling for “an atomic energy control commission” that would “include in its membership a strong and even dominating representation of the armed services.” See
Wall Street Journal,
February 25, 1946.

131
For a summary of why this “compromise is satisfactory,” see Ernest Lindley, “Atomic Legislation,”
Washington Post,
April 4, 1946. Lindley specialized in foreign affairs, and he later joined the Department of State as special assistant to Secretary Dean Rusk in 1961, and served as a member of the department’s Policy Planning Council until 1969. This arrangement, the
New York Times
agreed, “is about the best that can be expected at this time.” See
New York Times,
June 2, 1946.