The Specter of Communism by Melvyn Leffler
This is a brief book on the origins of the Cold War, slanted politically two ways: in its omission of information that undermines the author’s Soviet sympathies
and in chastising the Americans for not making the most flattering assumptions
about Soviet intentions. Leffler barely mentions, for instance, the pervasive
network of Soviet agents throughout American and British government agencies from
the 30s on (see the Venona Project). This gave Stalin knowledge of Western
plans and strengthened his negotiating position. It also gave him major
information on the fission and thermonuclear bombs. Then he fails to mention
that the Anglo-American allies permitted the Soviets uncontested access to the
Balkans during WWII, despite Churchill’s insistence that the Soviets would
impose totalitarian governance on the region postwar. He fails to notice that
FDR had intended a joint American-Soviet invasion and occupation of Japan
(which would have been strategically disastrous postwar). Leffler ignores the
consistently weak hand the Anglo-Americans (i.e., the spy-infested, communist
sympathizing Roosevelt administration) played in its dealings with Stalin. Roosevelt
is guilty of the terrible folly of presuming moral equivalence between America
and the USSR. This presumption led to his belief in fair play with Stalin, a
concept utterly alien to that master of realpolitik. Leffler, though, thinks
Roosevelt’s approach to Stalin was “shrewd and pragmatic”—an apt description only
of Stalin’s management of Roosevelt. Remember, Roosevelt did not demur when
Stalin demanded Soviet assimilation of the lands Hitler ceded to him under the
1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact—a massive concession that condemned many millions to
virtual enslavement.
Leffler faults Truman for taking defensive measures in
Europe, instead of continuing down the Roosevelt path of incremental
surrender. He accuses Truman of
focusing on “the Kremlin’s ominous [postwar] conduct and overlook[ing] signs
of Soviet moderation.” He defines moderation here as meaning that Stalin did
not conquer new lands at every possible opportunity, but contained himself to
submitting only 8 or 10 nations. How is this moderation? Essentially, Leffler
wants to excuse all of these Soviet aggressions based on the toll the Soviets
had suffered in WWII. Yet, why is this cause that Lithuania or Estonia should
cease to exist, that Poland should lose territory and have its people removed
to the West, that N. Korea should submit to a puppet communist regime? Stalin,
Machiavelli’s best student, took what he believed could be had without a fight
(with his spies indicating what America would fight for). Under Roosevelt, it
turned out he could get a great deal. Leffler credits Stalin’s moderation for
pulling out of Manchuria. But he only did so because he knew it was
strategically untenable—the Chinese would eventually fight to recover it, and
in the interim it upset the West.
At one point Leffler says of the Truman administration:
“U.S. officials were indifferent to the brutality and repression of Stalin’s
dictatorship at home so long as the Kremlin showed restraint abroad.” But, of
course, they were far from indifferent—otherwise the ideological dimension of
the Cold War would have disappeared. In fact, they were fatalistic, quite a
distinguishable perspective, and one largely to their credit. They had no
reason to believe they could effect regime change, or even the reform of a hostile
superpower. Need I mention yet another pro-communist omission by this Leffler
hack? China, perhaps a nation of some strategic consequence, went communist in
1949. The effective absence of U.S. aid to the non-communist forces goes
unmentioned. He does mention that Stalin aided Mao, but does not dare fault him
for it. Double standard? Nah. He merely blames Chiang Kai-shek’s incompetence,
then mocks the Republican party for criticizing Truman’s negligent China
policy.
He claims Truman in 1947, with the Marshall plan and the
Truman Doctrine, had moved “decisively to an adversarial relationship.” Yet,
the first was simply economic aid, which was also offered to the Soviets and
their substates. The second was a defensive understanding to help freely
elected governments resist armed insurrection. To call these measures, under
the circumstances, decisively adversarial appears a mischaracterization—is not the
insurrection itself, supported by outside communist states, the source of
animus? He cites Stalin’s fears that accepting American aid in the Soviet Union
and its sphere would have given the U.S. control over the Soviet economy: this
is absurd, but Leffler offers no reality check, implying it was a legitimate
fear. A few years of aid was no threat even in Eastern Europe, much less in the
Soviet Union. Stalin was simply consolidating his empire's ideological purity in the
postwar uncertainty. But, declining aid was a paranoid tactical misjudgement.
Another unmentioned asymmetry in superpower relations was the freedom of
communists in Western nations to form parties and pursue political power. In
Eastern Europe this was out of the question. Leffler does kindly notice that
American influence abroad was mainly a consequence of “persuasion, inducements,
and financial leverage,” implicitly in contrast to Soviet methods. The Berlin
blockade receives a straight retelling.
Leffler says that Truman “was willing to fight domestic
subversives.” Yet, he kept Harry Dexter White in a leading diplomatic position
for two years after the FBI had provided ample evidence that he was a spy.
Truman later lied about this, claiming that White was dismissed “promptly.” The
considerable damage White did is well-documented. The author does not mention
that Truman declined to take the obvious step of intensifying the investigation
Soviet espionage in America even after the Soviets tested the fission bomb
earlier than expected in 1949. Then Truman vetoed the McCarran Act, his
Secretary of State supported Alger Hiss after Hiss was convicted of lying about
spying for the Soviets, and he fired his vigorously anti-communist Defense
Secretary, Forrestal, for being unpopular with left-wing Democrats (Forrestal
died mysteriously a few weeks later).
In apologizing for Soviet connivance in the North Korean
attack, Leffler says “Truman and Acheson were unaware of the instrumental
effect Kim himself had played in initiating the conflict.” If Stalin and Mao
had not approved, it would not have happened. Kim had no effect; he was not instrumental, he was their
instrument; this was naked Soviet supported aggression to subjugate a
non-communist nation. Stalin is not faulted, of course. He just wanted a “buffer.”
They forced Truman’s hand, as Leffler notes: “If the Kremlin thought the Americans
would equivocate in a crisis, Moscow might be tempted to act more
adventuresomely.” The State Dept, already a leftist stronghold, warned against
even trying to free N. Korea—to stand unequivocal was one thing, after all, but
to actually believe in the American cause was past the capacity of State.
Truman was not sufficiently tamed, though, and set MacArther to take the
peninsula entire. The administration’s reluctance to use atomic bombs was
reasonable. They were willing to do so if the enemy significantly escalated,
also reasonable. Yet, given tremendous qualitative superiority in all respects
and quantitative superiority in terms of war production potential, the US could
have won decisively without the Bomb. The commitment was not made. Stalemate
resulted. I might add that even Eisenhower ducked his responsibilities by
signing the Korean armistice right after Stalin died, even though his death presumably weakened the
Soviet side.
Of McCarthy Leffler says he focused exclusively on looking
for spies, while ignoring foreign policy, though Leffler thinks “few of them actually
existed in the American government.” Contra Leffler, counterintelligence is foreign policy! And
to claim the Soviets were running only a few spies is demonstrably wrong at this point. The
number of communist sympathizers, moreover, at State and elsewhere, bears emphasis
as well. But, Leffler contends that “even more threatening to democratic
traditions and a free society [than the military-industrial complex] was the new
Red Scare.”So, then, unconsciousness of Soviet espionage was the better route—the
one which won us the victory of securing nuclear plans for the immaculate dear
leader Stalin? McCarthyism was a pathetically inadequate attempt to restore
political balance in America after a communist sympathizing four term President
and the domestically pro-socialist two term President who succeeded him.
Neither the Chief Executive nor the FBI did their jobs in these years. McCarthy’s
demagogy was crude and some of it misdirected, since he ought to have
concentrated on the federal government and nothing else. The American Left was
lucky that the pendulum swing was so weak and so late: they were able to hide their
revolutionary machinations for almost twenty years behind the Depression, the
World War, and the onset of the Cold War. They had transfomed America from a
democracy to a socialist democracy and prepared the ground for the bureaucratic
socialist oligarchy forthcoming. In his conclusion, Leffler claims that the
Americans “exaggerated the ability of the Soviets to capitalize on [postwar]
developments,” including those led by “revolutionary nationalist leaders” in
the third world—an absurd claim, motivated again by this Soviet apologist’s
urge to blame America first, a habit consistently evidenced in his book from
beginning to end.
Leffler does a better job on the conceptual level of
explaining the interactions of power and ideology in Cold War tensions. The
dynamic of the Cold War: the rivalry was one of ideology and power politics.
Power politics is always territorial, but in this case, since each ideology was
universalist, both elements of the rivalry urged territorial expansion. Thus,
Stalin wanted mastery over Eastern Europe to expand his geopolitical power and
to spread his ideology to new lands. And American influence over Western Europe
was also geopolitical and ideological. The two motivations usually overlapped,
though it might be argued the Soviets were more consistent in aligning the two.
American support for the Shah of Iran or the Afghan mujahideen were power
political plays, but contrary to our ideology. Even the Soviets, though, had
close ties with India, a quasi-capitalist democracy. Generally, when it came to a
choice, power politics proved more important to each side. The game of power politics never yet has
ceased, though it forms itself into a variety of configurations in different
times and places—in this case a bipolar configuration was inevitable. Before
the war it was multipolar, given the power of Germany, Japan, the UK, and
France. The ideological dimension has rarely approached the prominence of the
capitalist-communist opposition. Comparable to it, though, were wars arising
from the theological splits of Muslim-Christian, Muslim-Hindu,
Protestant-Catholic, and such like. As a final spur to make the security
dilemma inescapable, both powers in the Cold War believed they had to attain at
least equal global territorial power to ensure the long-term continuance of
their regimes. Neither could long survive international isolation.
