Decision making in the Cold War.

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  Europe was divided into spheres of influence After WWII. The Soviet Union and the rest of the allies had met each others military forces at Germany. The occupation of the Soviet and Western armies settled roughly between Eastern and Western Europe. There was genuine distrust of the Soviets by the rest of the allies. The United States and Britain began to negotiate with the Soviets on what type of governments would occur in fascist Europe. I hope that you will remember that after WWI at the treaty of Versailles, Germany and Prussia as well as the Balkans were divided up similar to the way the game of risk is played. The Yalta and Potsdam conferences were meant to avoid this outcome which had set up the circumstances for WWII. The Yalta conference was a good initial introduction of the parties but the Potsdam conference failed to produce any resolution. Franklin Roosevelt was deceased by Potsdam and Winston Churchill was sacked as Prime Minister. Joseph Stalin was the only member of the conference that was a part of both conferences. The sticking point for Stalin was a distrust of the two Western Powers. Stalin felt that the west had purposely delayed in launching their attack on Normandy to weaken the Soviet Union. It was only by bringing up good faith negotiations in Canada before the war had ended that resulted in the current spheres of influence. The US developed a policy of containment from a telegram from Moscow sent by a diplomat George Kennan to Secretary of State Dean Acheson.
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  The telegram described the Soviet’s as inheiritently expansionist. Keenan argued that its influence had to be "contained" in areas of vital strategic importance to the United States. This telegram became the basis for the Truman Doctrine which allocated $400,000 to bolster the economies of Greece and Turkey. This Policy became the basis of the Marshall Plan implemented by United States Secretary of State George Marshall, a native of Uniontown Pennsylvania. Initially Stalin considered a construction loan from the US but later Vyacheslav Molotov thought the support was insincere and he stormed out of Paris. Molotov thought that the US was using the Marshall plan to annex Germany and isolate the Soviets from the entire Soviet block. In 1946 President Harry Truman invited Winston Churchill to speak at a small college from his home state in Missouri. The famous Iron curtain speech in Fulton Missouri crystallized the spheres of influence into an eastern and western block of Socialist and Democratic countries. March 5, 1946 at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri:
  
  
  From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.
  
  The coolness of interaction between Soviets and the West continued to escallate. The Berlin Airlift was implemented to meet the aggression of a Soviet blockade of the city of West Berlin. Since Berlin is in East Germany it was easy for the Soviets to surround it and cut off supply lines. They could not stop the military ingenuity of the US from delivering supplies by air for over a year resulting in the Soviets allowing the western half of the city to be supplied.
  
  Harry Truman was an amazing president.
  
  He came into office as an outsider after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Death.
  
• He was able to pass much of his remaining “new deal” legislation and the opening of the United Nations.
• He made the decision to release the first atomic bomb.
• He and his team designed the Truman Doctrine.
• He and his team developed the NATO Treaty.
• The Marshall Plan
• The Berlin Airlift
• Won a re-election against an extremely popular New York Governor Thomas Dewey
• The Korean War
• He fired the most popular general in history when Douglas MacArthur was insubordinate and by doing this he established the civilian control of the military.
• He restored the White House to its current appearance.
• He was not afraid to take on big labor or big business. He siezed control when their efforts jeopardized our national security.
  
  He was an average man of average intelligence and appearance but his work ethic was incredible. He out studied, campaigned and worked all of his staff and adversaries. Part of the reason he was so memorable is that the circumstances of the country fell into his lap on his watch and he rose to the occasion.

Harry Truman was not elected he became president because President Roosevelt died when he was Vice President. I think most of you would have liked Harry Truman. He was a man that did not put on airs. He was approachable and easy to talk to. I recently read his biography by David McCullough and would highly recommend it. The virtue that I think of when I think of Harry Truman is decision making. He arguably made the most significant decision in history when he decided to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.

I know that you will want to know my opinion on this so here it is. I believe that President Truman made the right decision in dropping the first bomb on Hiroshima. He probably spared hundreds of thousands of lives that would have been lost by invading Japan. However, the second bomb dropped on Nagasaki was an un-necessary mistake. The Japanese “unconditional surrender” was not given enough time to develop after the first bomb was dropped. The President had turned over authority of the bomb to the military and they treated it like any other weapon. The strength of The President’s decision making ability was errantly delegated to the military. This was a strategic error in judgment. In the future years during the Eisenhower administration the cold war became ice cold under a policy of Mutual Assured Destruction. (MAD) The payoff of this policy was a tense but stable peace. It was based on the Nash Equilibrium, in which both sides are attempting to avoid their worst possible outcome — Nuclear Annihilation. Later the policy was expanded by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, to include a massive nuclear attack against the Soviet Union if they were to invade Europe, regardless of whether it was a conventional or a nuclear attack. The policy reached a fever pitch during the Cuban Missile crisis. If you find this post interesting I also recommend the book… "The United States and the End of the Cold War: Implications, Reconsiderations, Provocations (1992)" by John Lewis Gaddis.

Sometimes indecision is much worse than strong decision making. President Harry Truman had a plaque on his desk that stated “The Buck Stops Here” He was willing to make decisions and bear the consequences of the decisions he made. This is a true sign of leadership. To assume responsibility for making decisions is at the core of sound leadership. Decision making is an adjective in the language of virtue. It is comprised of diligence and responsibility. I am always grateful when someone is willing to take responsibility and diligently execute a plan to solve a problem, (like the invasion of Japan) or work proactively to avoid future problems as the Marshall Plan did. For this reason and his manner and family values Harry Truman is a favored president on Mr. P’s top 10 lists.

Truman Speech, August 9, 1945 (excerpt)

In a radio speech to the nation on August 9, 1945, President Truman called Hiroshima "a military base." It seems likely, considering his July 25 diary entry, that he was not aware that Hiroshima was a city. Otherwise, he was being untruthful about the nature of the target. Truman delivered his speech from the White House at 10 P.M. Washington time on August 9, 1945. By this time, a second atomic bomb already had destroyed the city of Nagasaki. Because of the great length of the speech, most of which dealt with Germany, only the relevant paragraph is quoted here.

The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction.
Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, Containing the Public Messages, Speeches and Statements of the President April 12 to December 31, 1945 (Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1961) page 212. The full text also was published in the New York Times, August 10, 1945, page 12.