Abstract
Strange climes, alien cultures, the human eddies of withered imperial systems — such was the confusing, colorful backdrop for the unfolding of a cold war triggered by heartland-inspired ambitions, ambivalence and anxieties. Around southern Eurasia, the rimlands curled crescent-like from atoll’s edge to craggy ridges, from the scrub and sand of North Africa to the broadleaf jungles of Southeast Asia. ‘Cargo cults’ had been seeded on Pacific islands: quasi-religious doctrines based on the divinely ordained appearance of food and other provisions attached to parachutes. Decades later, cult enthusiasts would still await the blossoming of new goods from the skies. All along the distant marches of empire, it seemed, black, brown and yellow peoples crouched in anticipation of the dramatic change sure to come on the wings of war. Westerners saw the colonial world alternately glistening in naive beauty, then pulsing with primitive energy alongside atavistic tradition and fatalistic neglect. Such shifting perspectives were common among US intelligence officers who savored their wartime role of gathering background material for the pax americana. The colonial theaters provided compelling, even romantic tales of fading glory, sahibs in decline: from the pampered, servant-ridden OSS quarters in New Delhi, through tense jungle intrigue and tough guerrilla warfare, through new bonds of comradeship between Southeast Asians and Americans, to the tattered, half-pathetic disarray of colonial administrations in such cities as Tripoli, Beirut, Damascus, Hanoi, Saigon and Batavia.
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Notes
Harold Isaacs, No Peace for Asia ( New York: Macmillan Company, 1947 ), p. 179;
Elizabeth P. MacDonald, Undercover Girl ( New York: Macmillan, 1947 ), p. 227.
Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War (1959; reprint, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1988), pp. 2–3, 191–9;
Laurens van der Post, The Night of the New Moon ( London: Hogarth Press, 1971 ), p. 149;Isaacs, No Peace for Asia, p. 186.
Hornbeck, ‘The United States and the Netherlands East Indies’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 255 (January 1948): p. 132.This comment was made while discussing the importance of the Netherlands to US policymaking vis-à-vis the European theater of the cold war. Hornbeck did not feel that Indonesians were yet ready for independence (pp. 130–1).
William Attwood, The Twilight Struggle: Tales of the Cold War ( New York: Harper & Row, 1987 ), p. 12.
See, for instance, Richard A. Best, Jr., ‘Cooperation with Like-Minded Peoples’: British Influences on American Security Policy, 1945–1949 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986 ), pp. 54, 64.
Lippmann, US Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (Boston: Little, Brown, 1943), pp. 147, 5, 7, 82–4, 125–30, 174.
Henry Butterfield Ryan, The Vision of Anglo-America: The US-UK Alliance and the Emerging Cold War, 1943–1946 ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987 ), p. 30, notes that Lippmann’s book was well received in the British Foreign Office.
‘Problems and Objectives of United States Policy’, 2 April 1945, enclosure in Donovan to Truman, 5 May 1945, folder: OSS, Chronological File April–May 1945, Box 15, Rose Conway File, Harry S. Truman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri; Welles, Introduction to Crane Brinton, The United States and Britain (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945), p. viii; Eisenhower testimony, 15 November 1945, House Committee on Military Affairs, Universal Military Training, Hearings, 79th Cong., 1st sess., 1946, p. 77; ‘Estimate of British Post-War Capabilities and Intentions’, 13 February 1946, JIC 340/1, folder: ABC 092 France (15 Apr 45), Box 95, ABC Decimal Files, Record Group (RG) 319, Military Reference Branch, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC (hereafter cited as MRB).
Harbutt, The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 169, 173–5. Harbutt wrote that Byrnes’ 28 February speech ‘must have suggested to the Russians not only an attempt to convert the United Nations into the militant instrument of a new American diplomacy, and a call for the maintenance and revival of American military power, but also the embryo of an Anglo-American alliance to counter Soviet power’ (p. 175).
‘The Sinews of Peace’, 5 March 1946, in Robert Rhodes James (ed.), Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963 (London: Chelsea House Publishers, 1974), 7: pp. 7285–93; Eisenhower statement, 5 June 1946, House Committee on Appropriations, Military Establishment Appropriation Bill for 1947, Hearings, 79th Cong., 2d sess., 1946, p. 1122.
See, for example, Harbutt, Iron Curtain, pp. 151, 153, 164–5, 168–9, 267, 280–1; Best, Cooperation with Like-Minded Peoples, pp. 10, 114; Bruce Robillet Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey, and Greece (Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. xx, 300, 311–12. Ryan, Vision of Anglo-America, focuses on the importance of the decline of British power for American policymaking (p. 10), but he concludes that the turning point in US-Soviet relations did not come until the Truman Doctrine speech of March 1947 (pp. 106, 112, 172).
Harold Callender, ‘France’s Goal: Neither Moscow Nor Detroit’, New York Times Magazine, 2 June 1946, p. 11.
Rupert Emerson, ‘Nationalist Movements in Southeast Asia’, in John Carter Vincent et al. (eds), America’s Future in the Pacific ( New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1947 ), pp. 119–20; Churchill comment to James Forrestal, 10 March 1946, Forrestal Diaries p. 145; Ellen J. Hammer,‘Blueprinting a New Indochina’, Pacific Affairs 21 (September 1948): p. 253. Churchill’s comment, as recorded by Forrestal, read: ‘Referring to the Russians, he said they had no understanding of such words as “honesty”, “honor”, and “truth”—in fact, that they regarded these as negative virtues. They will, he said, try every door in the house, enter all rooms which are not locked, and when they come to one that is barred, if they are unsuccessful in breaking through it, they will withdraw and invite you to dine genially that same evening’.
Landon to secretary of state, Hanoi, n.d. (received 27 February 1946), FRUS 1946, 8: p. 27; Ho Chi Minh letter, 18 February 1946, Department of Defense, United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967 (Washington: GPO, 1971), vol. 1, pt. C: pp. 98–100. Gary R. Hess, ‘United States Policy and the Origins of the French-Viet Minh War, 1945–46’, Peace and Change 3 (Summer—Fall 1975): p. 26, has stressed that while all American observers in Indochina, both civilian and military, did not feel the same way about the DRV, ‘their reports underscored the seriousness of the French-Vietnamese relationship and suggested the potential influence of the United States in helping to resolve the worsening situation’.
Jean Sainteny, Ho Chi Minh and His Vietnam: A Personal Memoir trans. Herma Briffault (Chicago: Cowles Book Company, 1972), pp. 70, 72–5.
George Sheldon, ‘Status of Viet Nam’, Far Eastern Survey 15 (18 December 1946): pp. 373, 377.
Robert Trumbull, ‘The West Loses “Face” in the East’, New York Times Magazine 1 December 1946, pp. 12, 58.
See the text of Clark Kerr’s instructions in Lord Halifax to the secretary of state, 26 January 1946, ibid., pp. 801–3; Foote to secretary of state, 26 January 1946, ibid., p. 804; Foote to secretary of state, 8 February 1946, ibid., p. 807. Peter Dennis, Troubled Days of Peace: Mountbatten and South East Asia Command, 1945–46 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987), pp. 162, 182–3, wrote that Christison had become an obstacle to the resolution of East Indies affairs and thus had to be replaced, despite the fact that ‘his no-nonsense approach undoubtedly injected a very necessary note of realism into the situation in Java’ (p. 183). Christison was given the Northern Command in Britain and replaced in NEI by Lt. Gen. Montague Stopford. Dutch officials removed from NEI included Adm. C. E. H. Helfrich and Lt. Gen. L. H. van Oyen.
Robert J. McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945–49 ( Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981 ), p. 123;
see also Leslie Palmier, Indonesia and the Dutch ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1962 ), p. 51;
Charles Wolf, Jr., The Indonesian Story: The Birth, Growth and Structure of the Indonesian Republic ( New York: John Day, 1948 ), pp. 29–30.
Acheson to US embassy in the Netherlands, 12 March 1947, FRUS 1947, 6: p. 905; Gary R. Hess, The United States’ Emergence as a Southeast Asian Power, 1940–1950 ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1987 ), p. 209.In mid-April, Acheson wrote to American officials in Holland, ‘At your discretion you may reiterate [to the Netherlands] FonOff [the] US view .. . [concerning the] importance [of an] agreement [the] soonest possible to permit world trade on [a] non-discriminatory basis with [the] entire area, stressing our view that such trade will prove [to be an] important factor in restoring economic stability [in] NEI’. Acheson to US embassy in the Netherlands, 18 April 1947, FRUS 1947, 6: p. 918.
Deimel oral history interview, 5 June 1975, p. 67, Truman Library. For further discussion of the Europe-first priority, for both the United States and the USSR, see the following: Harold M. Vinacke, The United States and the Far East, 1945–1951 (Stanford University Press, 1952), pp. 3–5;
Russell H. Fifield, Americans in Southeast Asia: The Roots of Commitment ( New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1973 ), pp. 70–1;
Roger E. Kanet, ‘The Soviet Union and the Colonial Question, 1917–1953’, in Roger E. Kanet (ed.), The Soviet Union and the Developing Nations ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974 ), pp. 1–26;
George McT. Kahin, ‘The United States and the Anticolonial Revolutions in Southeast Asia, 1945–1950’, in Yonosuke Nagai and Akira Iriye (eds), The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), pp. 343, 347–8;
Steven P. Sapp, ‘The United States, France and the Cold War: Jefferson Caffery and American-French Relations, 1944–1949’ (Ph.D. diss., Kent State University, 1978), pp. 151, 153; Scott L. Bills, ‘The United States, NATO, and the Colonial World’, in Lawrence S. Kaplan and Robert W. Clawson (eds), NATO After Thirty Years ( Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1981 ), pp. 149–64; and Geir Lundestad, East, West, North, South: Major Developments in International Politics, 1945–1986, trans. Gail Adams Kvam (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1986), pp. 67–8.
Alex J. Robertson, The Bleak Midwinter 1947 (Manchester University Press, 1987), p. 10;
Robert A. Pollard, ‘Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War: Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, and American Rearmament, 1944–1950’, Diplomatic History 9 (Summer 1985): p. 277; see chap. 1, passim, for a brief overview of both weather and economic conditions in early 1947.
See also Robert A. Pollard, ‘Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War: Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, and American Rearmament, 1944–1950’, Diplomatic History 9 (Summer 1985): p. 277, and Charles W. Yost, History and Memory ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1980 ), p. 224.
Robert M. Hathaway, Ambiguous Partnership: Britain and America, 1944–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), chaps 10 and 12, contains a good summary of the central themes of the US-UK economic relationship during the immediate post-war years, including the negotiations for the British loan signed by President Truman on 15 July 1946.
Robin Edmonds, Setting the Mould: The United States and Britain, 1945–1950 ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1986 ), p. 103, observed that Britain’s economic distress in 1947 at last dispelled fears among Truman administration policymakers and members of Congress that England constituted a major rival to American commerce.
Bevin to Orme Sargent, 2 September 1946, quoted in G. M. Alexander, The Prelude to the Truman Doctrine: British Policy in Greece 1944–1947 ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1982 ), p. 213.
Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1969 ), p. 219. Also see Vandenberg’s speech to the Senate on 8 April 1947, in which he argued ‘that the fall of Greece, followed by the collapse of Turkey, could precipitate a chain reaction which would threaten peace and security around the globe’; On Assistance to Greece and Turkey (Stamford, CT: Overbrook Press, 1947), p. 3.
Thus, Richard Best, Cooperation with Like-Minded Peoples, p. 132, saw US policy as ‘formally redefined’ by the Truman Doctrine speech, and much the same point was made by James L. Gormly, The Collapse of the Grand Alliance, 1945–1948 ( Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987 ), pp. 158–9. Ryan, Vision of Anglo-America, p. 172, asserted that the 12 March speech and the subsequent authorization bill ‘provide a realistic point at which to mark America’s full-fledged entry into the international politics of confrontation’.
See also John Lewis Gaddis, ‘Was the Truman Doctrine a Real Turning Point?’, Foreign Affairs 52 (January 1974): pp. 386–402, for a strong assertion that the Truman Doctrine, despite its apparent globalism, did not signal a major reorientation of US foreign policy away from Europe. Pollard, ‘Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War’, p. 279, asserts that the Truman Doctrine ‘was primarily an instrument of economic containment in Western Europe’.
On a related point, there has emerged no evidence to support the notion that the Soviets were directly involved in the Greek civil war: see Lawrence S. Wittner, American Intervention in Greece, 1943–1949 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), pp. 255, 262;Alexander, Prelude to the Truman Doctrine, pp. 93, 99, 101, 114, 250. Wittner suggested that Stalin perceived a communist victory in Greece as ‘likely to bolster Tito’s hegemony in the Balkans, while at the same time angering the Western powers and thereby endangering Soviet holdings elsewhere in Eastern Europe’ (p. 262). Alexander characterized Stalin’s reluctance to become entangled in Greece as a product of his search for precedents which would give him a free hand in Eastern Europe (p. 251). Kuniholm, Origins of the Cold War in the Near East, p. 405, argued that even if there was no evidence of a direct Soviet role in Greek affairs, the USSR was indirectly supporting Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria—who were aiding the Greek rebels—and that Moscow would certainly have taken advantage of any communist victory in Greece regardless of Stalin’s previous thinking on the matter.
McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War, p. 156; George F. Kennan, Memoirs 1925–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967 ), pp. 53–4, 319–20, 3224;
Kuniholm, Origins of the Cold War in the Near East, pp. 415–16; Theodore Draper, ‘Falling Dominoes’, New York Review of Books, 27 October 1983, p. 18; Theodore Draper, ‘American Hubris: From Truman to the Persian Gulf’, New York Review of Books, 16 July 1987, p. 41. See also Edmund Taylor, Awakening From History ( London: Chatto & Windus, 1971 ), p. 281, for his discussion of ‘officialized delusion’. James Gormly, Collapse of the Grand Alliance, pp. 134–5, suggests that the universalistic language of the Truman Doctrine was in part designed to ‘play down the extent to which the United States was consciously moving to fill ailing Britannia’s shoes’.
Wittner, American Intervention in Greece, pp. 307–8; see also Kuniholm, Origins of the Cold War in the Near East, pp. 419–20, and Richard J. Barnet, Intervention and Revolution: The United States in the Third World (New York: World Publishing, 1968), pp. 97, 100–01.
Kennan, ‘Reflections on Containment’, in Terry L. Deibel and John Lewis Gaddis (eds), Containing the Soviet Union: A Critique of US Policy ( New York: Pergamon-Brassey’s International Defense Publishers, 1987 ), p. 17;see also Kennan, Memoirs 1925–1950, pp. 294–5, 315, 358–59, 367.
Acheson statement, 20 May 1947, Executive Sessions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (Historical Series), 80th Cong., 1st and 2d sess., 1947–48 (1976), pp. 53–4; Hodge remarks, 26 March 1947, House Committee on Appropriations, Military Establishment Appropriation Bill for 1948, Hearings, 80th Cong., 1st sess., 1947, p. 1476; Buhite, Soviet-American Relations in Asia, 1945–1954 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981), pp. 155, 158, 160–1. For other accounts of the growing symbolic importance of the US commitment to southern Korea,
see Charles M. Dobbs, The Unwanted Symbol: American Foreign Policy, the Cold War, and Korea, 1945–1950 ( Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981 )
and William Whitney Stueck, Jr., The Road to Confrontation: American Policy Toward China and Korea, 1947–1950 ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981 ).
See Michael Schaller, ‘Securing the Great Crescent: Occupied Japan and the Origins of Containment in Southeast Asia’, Journal of American History 69 (1982): pp. 392–414; Kennan, Memoirs 1925–1950, p. 374.
Russell H. Fifield, Americans in Southeast Asia: The Roots of Commitment ( New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell, 1973 ), p. 68; see alsoHess, United States’ Emergence as a Southeast Asian Power, pp. 218, 245, 248; McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War, pp. 139–40; and Vinacke, United States and the Far East, p. 9.
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© 1990 Scott L. Bills
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Bills, S.L. (1990). Erring on the Safe Side: The Cold War and the Politics of Colonialism, 1946–47. In: Empire and Cold War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20969-9_6
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