NSC-68 and Post-War Consensus

I Another Era of Good Feelings

Election of Eisenhower

Dems also offered Eisenhower their nomination

Check out the map

Retreat of Republicans from intense hostility to New Deal Legislation

No calls for repeal OASSI, social security, FHA, Fannie Mae

And more domestic consensus: GI Bill; Urban renewal

Bipartisan agreement on Civil Rights

Troops to little Rock

Bipartisan support for cr legislation under JFK, LBJ

Cold War Civil Rights

The architects of NSC69 put together “a policy that provided solutions to a number of immediate and pressing problems” And they got lucky – the Korean War made their case more plausible, and the successful soviet atomic reaction made it more pressing.

II Immediate problems

Fragile support for Marshall Plan

By the 1947 it was clear that without a major American initiative the nightmare of world recession would become a reality. The Marshall Plan was an attack on the obstacles to European participation in the world economy. It financed European imports form the US, for example -- but it was time-limited. And many in Cgs see it as a give-away of our money. Isolationism was not dead yet. Suspicious that rhetoric about soviet thereat was a “deliberate creation and exaggeration” by the Truman administration. It was increasingly difficult for the T admin to gain Cgsnl approval for the Marshall Plan with each passing year; the president had to promise progress in European self-sufficiency.

Fear of recession

Secy of State Dean Acheson: “We cannot go through another ten years like the ten years at the end of the twenties and the beginning of the Thirties”

And NSC 68: There are grounds for predicting that the US and other free nations will within a period of a few years at most experience a decline in economic activity of serious proportions unless a more positive governmental programs are developed

Balance of payments

Acheson again: we don’t a problem of production; the US has unlimited creative energy. The important thing is markets. We have to see that what the country produces is used and is sold [and create] financial arrangements which make its production possible .. [we] must look to foreign markets. This leads to our first post-war goal.

III Post-war Goals

“to develop a healthy international community”

-a stable international monetary order with a high level of openness to market forces

- this political as well as economic. Depression in Europe would make it more susceptible to claims of communism/socialism. Communist nations not part of market sys, so no help with out ecn problems.

“containing the Soviet Union”

atomic test; Korean war

this government” the American people, and all free peoples” must recognize that “the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the free world is at stake”

alphabet soup nato, seato, etc for containment

Germany: neutral isn’t good enough for us; fears of “Finlandization” of Europe

IV Rearmament as solution

In practice, a massive rearmament effort that tripled us military spending, while also rearming other members of the Western Alliance.

Allows us to finance European purchase of US arms.

Stationing troops in Europe adds to outflow of dollars.

Some object that nsc 68 ‘vastly exaggerates soviet strength’.

Builds on foreign policy consensus

National Defense Student Loans. Book Jackets

Distributive policy with a difference

Unlike the antebellum roads and canals, creates a continuing appetite for more of the same.

V Changes since

Decline and collapse of the soviet threat

Rise of the European union (we were also protecting France from Germany)

Clinton liberated us from much of this, cutting military spending as every San Diego resident knows, closing bases, and cutting our military industries

Block’s conclusion gives us a warning with incredible foresight -- recall, this written in 1979 – in the area where the Soviet threat is perceived to be most serious – the Persian Gulf -- the danger arises not from the great strength of the Soviet army, but from the weakness of the feudal regimes with which the US is allied. George Kennan’s observation, Block said, is as true now as it was in 1950: “communism” [must] be viewed as a crisis of our own civilization, and the principal antidote [lies] in overcoming the weaknesses of our own institutions.”