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The Cold War profoundly transformed American society, perhaps most significantly through the development of national security institutions that are very much alive more than two decades after the end of the Cold War. The essays in this volume explore the highly charged political environment in which the national security state was created and assess its broader implications for society, both civilian and military. In the complex world of policy making, the executive and legislative branches of government, as well as the branches of the military, struggled with questions of control of national security institutions, constraints on presidential power and civilian control of the military, and long-term implications of policy decisions made in the uncertain post¿World War II years.In his efforts to balance the need for security with the ideals of freedom and individuality, President Truman played a major role in creating and shaping the modern national security state, and the decisions he made at the dawn of the postwar era still echo today.
In A Cross of Iron, one of the country's most distinguished diplomatic historians provides a comprehensive account of the national security state that emerged in the first decade of the Cold War. Michael J. Hogan traces the process of state-making as it unfolded in struggles to unify the armed forces, harness science to military purposes, mobilize military manpower, control the defense budget, and distribute the cost of defense across the economy. At stake, Hogan argues, was a fundamental contest over the nation's political identity and postwar purpose. President Harry S. Truman and his successor were in the middle of this contest. According to Hogan, they tried to reconcile an older set of values with the new ideology of national security and the country's democratic traditions with its global obligations. Their efforts determined the size and shape of the national security state that finally emerged.
Harry S Truman's national security legacy, as documented here by Truman scholars and political leaders on the 50th anniversary of the end of his presidency, is marked by a series of noteworthy foreign policy initiatives. Credited with establishing post-World War II order, Truman's political heritage also includes the creation of NATO and the United Nations, food and foreign aid programs, the Marshall Plan and the integration of the US armed forces. Contributions from distinguished former aides to President Truman and recognised national security experts make this book an especially important and unique read. Highlights include a conclusion by General Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to Presidents Ford and Bush and a foreword by Clifton Truman Daniel, President Truman's grandson.
President Harry Truman identified himself repeatedly as a champion of civil liberties in the American system of government. Although the pursuit of peace topped his agenda, Communist containment and civil liberties were, in his mind, closely linked. The American Constitution's Bill of Rights was a source of strength that the United States had, but that authoritarian regimes did not. To strengthen respect for civil liberties, the president sought to educate Americans about the great importance of these liberties. Critics did not always value civil liberties as highly as Truman, and he felt that opponents weakened the pursuit of peace by suggesting that America, in the fight against communism, move away from the great model of liberal principles. Contributors in this volume recognise that President Truman had shortcomings in this area, but he balanced concerns about national security and individual liberties, and worked hard to persuade Americans in and out of government that civil liberties must be respected.
Jeffrey Frank, author of the bestselling Ike and Dick, returns with the “beguiling” (The New York Times) first full account of the Truman presidency in nearly thirty years, recounting how a seemingly ordinary man met the extraordinary challenge of leading America through the pivotal years of the mid-20th century. The nearly eight years of Harry Truman’s presidency—among the most turbulent in American history—were marked by victory in the wars against Germany and Japan; the first use of an atomic bomb and the development of far deadlier weapons; the start of the Cold War and the creation of the NATO alliance; the Marshall Plan to rebuild the wreckage of postwar Europe; the Red Scare; and the fateful decision to commit troops to fight a costly “limited war” in Korea. Historians have tended to portray Truman as stolid and decisive, with a homespun manner, but the man who emerges in The Trials of Harry S. Truman is complex and surprising. He believed that the point of public service was to improve the lives of one’s fellow citizens and fought for a national health insurance plan. While he was disturbed by the brutal treatment of African Americans and came to support stronger civil rights laws, he never relinquished the deep-rooted outlook of someone with Confederate ancestry reared in rural Missouri. He was often carried along by the rush of events and guided by men who succeeded in refining his fixed and facile view of the postwar world. And while he prided himself on his Midwestern rationality, he could act out of instinct and combativeness, as when he asserted a president’s untested power to seize the nation’s steel mills. The Truman who emerges in these pages is a man with generous impulses, loyal to friends and family, and blessed with keen political instincts, but insecure, quick to anger, and prone to hasty decisions. Archival discoveries, and research that led from Missouri to Washington, Berlin and Korea, have contributed to an indelible and “intimate” (The Washington Post) portrait of a man, born in the 19th century, who set the nation on a course that reverberates in the 21st century, a leader who never lost a schoolboy’s love for his country and its Constitution.
The essays in this volume provide a wide-ranging overview of the intentions, achievements, and failures of the Truman administration.
Since World War II the importance of the military command function of the American presidency has increased dramatically. U.S. chief executives have emerged virtually unchecked as wielders of enormous military power.The Awesome Power, the first comprehensive study of Harry S. Truman as commander in chief, is an important and highly relevant book, especially in view of the growing concern over the president's ability to wage war without the consent of either the Congress or the American people. A selective chronicle of the events in which Truman's decisions were of historic significance, the book analyzes his decision-making process in terms of the information available to him, the existing pressures, and the relationship of his decisions to his own well-defined concepts of how a commander in chief should function.The author gives a detailed account of the events and circumstances leading up to Truman's most significant decision -- to use the atomic bomb against Japan. He also examines Truman's decisions on postwar civilian control of atomic energy, his intervention in Korea, his leadership in the Cold War, and his conflict with General Douglas MacArthur, whose opposition to the president's limited-war policies endangered the very basis of the civil-military relationship.Based in part on research in classified documents previously untapped by nongovernmental researchers, The Awesome Power is a thorough treatment of a subject of great contemporary significance, with one of the most fascinating characters in American political history as its central figure.