Thinking Like a Historian: The Global Cold War

1. President Harry S. Truman, address before joint session of Congress, March 12, 1947. Known as the Truman Doctrine, this speech outlined Truman’s plan to give large-scale assistance to Greece and Turkey as part of a broader anticommunist policy.

   To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations. The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. …

   At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

   One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

   The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

   I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

   I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.

   I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.

2. Syngman Rhee, president of South Korea, criticizing U.S. policy in 1950. The Korean War, 1950–1953, represented the militarization of the Truman Doctrine.

   A few days ago one American friend said that if the U.S. gave weapons to South Korea, she feared that South Korea would invade North Korea. This is a useless worry of some Americans, who do not know South Korea. Our present war is not a Cold War, but a real shooting war. Our troops will take all possible counter-measures. … In South Korea the U.S. has one foot in South Korea and one foot outside so that in case of an unfavorable situation it could pull out of the country. I daresay that if the U.S. wants to aid our country, it should not be only lip-service.

3. Secretary of State Dean Acheson’s testimony before the Senate Armed Forces and Foreign Relations Committee, 1951.

   The attack on Korea was … a challenge to the whole system of collective security, not only in the Far East, but everywhere in the world. It was a threat to all nations newly arrived at independence. …

   This was a test which would decide whether our collective security system would survive or would crumble. It would determine whether other nations would be intimidated by this show of force. …

   As a people we condemn aggression of any kind. We reject appeasement of any kind. If we stood with our arms folded while Korea was swallowed up, it would have meant abandoning our principles, and it would have meant the defeat of the collective security system on which our own safety ultimately depends.

4. Shigeru Yoshida, prime minister of Japan, speech before the Japanese Diet (parliament), July 14, 1950.

   It is heartening … that America and so many members of the United Nations have gone to the rescue of an invaded country regardless of the heavy sacrifices involved. In case a war breaks out on an extensive scale how would Japan’s security be preserved [since we are disarmed]? … This has been hotly discussed. However, the measures taken by the United Nations have done much to stabilize our people’s minds.

5. John Foster Dulles, secretary of state (1953–1959), June 30, 1954, radio and television address to the American people. In 1951, Jacobo Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala. Arbenz pursued reform policies that threatened large landholders, including the United Fruit Company. In 1954, the United States CIA engineered a coup that overthrew Arbenz and replaced him with Carlos Castillo Armas, a colonel in the Guatemalan military.

   Tonight I should like to speak with you about Guatemala. It is the scene of dramatic events. They expose the evil purpose of the Kremlin to destroy the inter-American system, and they test the ability of the American States to maintain the peaceful integrity of the hemisphere.

   For several years international communism has been probing here and there for nesting places in the Americas. It finally chose Guatemala as a spot which it could turn into an official base from which to breed subversion which would extend to other American Republics.

   This intrusion of Soviet despotism was, of course, a direct challenge to our Monroe Doctrine, the first and most fundamental of our foreign policies.

6. Guillermo Toriello, Guatemalan foreign minister, speech to delegates at the Tenth Inter-American Conference of the Organization of American States in Caracas, Venezuela, March 5, 1954.

   What is the real and effective reason for describing our government as communist? From what sources comes the accusation that we threaten continental solidarity and security? Why do they [United States] wish to intervene in Guatemala?

   The answers are simple and evident. The plan of national liberation being carried out with firmness by my government has necessarily affected the privileges of the foreign enterprises that are impeding the progress and the economic development of the country. … With construction of publically owned ports and docks, we are putting an end to the monopoly of the United Fruit Company. …

   They wanted to find a ready expedient to maintain the economic dependence of the American Republics and suppress the legitimate desires of their peoples, cataloguing as “communism” every manifestation of nationalism or economic independence, any desire for social progress, any intellectual curiosity, and any interest in progressive and liberal reforms.

7. Herblock cartoon from the Washington Post, February 11, 1962. Many Latin American countries were beset by a wide gap between a small wealthy elite and the mass of ordinary, much poorer citizens. American officials worried that this made social revolution an attractive alternative for those at the bottom.
   

   A 1962 Herblock Cartoon, by The Herb Block Foundation.