PRESENT AT THE FALL:

Present at the Re-creation: The newest world order takes shape. (Noemie Emery, 09/30/2002, Weekly Standard)

Truman's war was against both traditional Russian expansionism and a radical movement that knew no national boundaries; a war of threats and rapprochements, in which American presidents walked a 50-year tightrope between risking Armageddon by being too aggressive, and inviting aggression by appearing too weak. America amassed a vast stockpile of terrible weapons, but the aim was never to use them. Great wars usually inflict great pain on their people; during the Cold War, Americans lived better than ever before in their history; there was great suffering for some (in Korea and Vietnam), but most were untouched. The Cold War brought five decades of low-key anxiety, broken by moments of breath-holding terror. It was a war in which provocations were met by a wide range of responses, based on refined calculations. Truman chose to circumvent the blockade of Berlin, rather than force a direct confrontation with Soviet power. Kennedy let the Berlin Wall rise without incident, but was prepared to face war over missiles in Cuba. In the early years of the Cold War, "liberationists" decried the containment doctrine as being too passive. But it was Ronald Reagan, a liberationist by temperament, who finally won it, by his aggressive use of containment tactics--economic, psychological, and political warfare, first recommended back in 1946.

Containment was the worst possible option then, as it is now. We should have either come home, on the assumption that communism would not be able to digest all of Western Europe, as it could not even digest Eastern Europe. Or we should have fought a war of libberation right then.
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 21, 2002 9:20 PM