TRUMAN DOCTRINE TO REAGAN DOCTRINE, THE FATAL FLAWS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000705910004-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 8, 2011
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: March 12, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Si Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000705910004-9
AR 1q,ltAN- LU
ON PAGE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
12 March 1987
Truman Doctrine to Reagan Doctrine,
the fatal. flaws'
J' By DaMel Schoff
FORTY years ago today, when Presi-
dent Truman addressed a joint ses-
sion of Congress and announced
that the United States would be the de-
fender of democracy around the world,
starting with Greece and Turkey, I was
just starting out as a foreign correspond-
ent in the Netherlands. Among the Dutch,
the speech was greeted with some sur-
prise. The language
seemed strident: "It is
the policy of the
United States to give
support to free people
who are attempting to
resist subjugation
from armed minor-
ities or from outside
` forces."
` Holland, only be-
ginning to pull itself
out of Nazi occupation and devastation,
did not perceive the Communists as a big
problem. The Communist Party had never
won more than 5 percent of the votes in
an election. The Dutch worried less about
invading hordes than food hoarding.
Later we learned how that speech had
come to be. The Russians were perceived
as mounting a threat to the Turkish
straits and the Dardanelles. Truman's
wise men," like Dean Acheson and
Averell Harriman, were warning him
about falling dominoes. Britain, drained
by world war II, was ready to withdraw
its support from Turkey and the corrupt
right-wing government of Greece. For
Acheson and other hawks in the Truman
administration, there was no doubt that
the US had to pick up the baton being
dropped by Britain, or Greece and Turkey
would fall into Soviet hands and the lights
would start going out all over Europe.
George Kerman provided the philo-
sophical underpinning for the Truman
Doctrine with his own concept called
?containment," a concept he would come
to regret because of the simplistic way in
which it was applied.
So T ruman's people carne up with a
$400 million aid package for Greece and
Turkey. Republican Sen. Arthur Vanden-
berg privately warned President Tim man
that the only way he would get Congress
to go for it was to "make a speech and
scare the hell out of the country."
President Truman drew a line between
East and West, between freedom and tyr-
annY, between communism and democ-
racy. And if he didn't quite scare the hell
out of the country, he scared some think-
ing people. His own secretary of state,
~~ Marshall, thought there was too
flamboyant anticommunism in the
speech. So did Europeans, in no mood for
another war, not even a cold war.
Greece and Turkey were "saved,,,
though there is a real question of how
threatened they had been. But the US set
off on a course from the domino of Greece
and Turkey to the domino of Vietnam,
from Bolsheviks to the "evil empire,"
from Truman Doctrine to Reagan
Doctrine.
Looking back, one can trace that line. '
First, having asked Congress to get tough
with Communists abroad, President Tru-
man felt he had to get tough with Commu-
nists at home. So he ordered loyalty tests
ti
b
u
for government wore, cant i
n W of the interview - except for my question
the hysteria known as McCarthyism about ideological differexraes with China,
Next, to soften the harshness of the, too sensitive an issue then for the Soviet
Truman Doctrine rhetoric and to deal ptats Washington, Secretary of
with Europe's more urgent problems, the ' But
State John Foster Dulles still saw only
Marshall Plan was launched -a plan that ..international Corrimirnism;? and, years
Truman wisely decided to name for his, later, some in the US government still
secretary of state rather than himself. considered the SovietChinese split as just
But the plan, visionary as it was, was still
designed to exclude the Soviet Union and a KGB disinformation trick.
Eastern Europe. In June, the anniversary In Korea, a miscalculation was made
of the Marshall Plan, it will be interesting that drew China into the war. And in
to reflect how different a world this Vietnam, an untold series of miscal-
might be if the Marshall Plan had been culations was made. As Acheson
used to unite rather than divide Europe. preached domino theory in Europe,
? Europeans were a little cynical about Lyndon Johnson preached domino theory
the single-minded American view of the in Asia. But in Asia the Communists were
communist "menace." The Marshall Plan not contained. President Nixon's "secret
was sold to a doubting Congress as the plan" to get the Russians to call off Ho Chi
only way to save Italy from going red in a Minh did not work, and that domino fell.
pending election. So money went where So now the Reagan Doctrine, the
communism seemed to threaten. French grandson of the Truman Doctrine. If the
Prime Minister Pierre Mendis-France 'human Doctrine was meant to hold back
said, "We must keep up this indispensable the Communists, the Reagan doctrine was
communist scare." A story went around meant to roll them back. If the Truman
that the Principality of Monaco, which Doctrine relied on money and metal to
couldn't find a single Communist, asked support friendly governments, the Rear
the French if it could borrow some in gam Doctrine was more inclined to use
order to get US aid, but was told, "Sorry, cloak and dagger to undermine unfriendly
we need every one we have!" regimes. The idea of intervention was
By 1949 the Russians had nuclear carefully deveioned in rhetoric even as
weapons and by 1960 the United States covert-action schemes were beintt mlotted
had started a new military buildup with at CIA headauarters in Lan0m Va, and
the doctrine of "flexible response," com-
mitting America to defend freedom ev-
erywhere against "the grim oligarchy of
the Kremlin ... the slave state."
"Flexible response," son of the Tru-
man Doctrine, was embodied in a docu-
ment called NSC.68 (for National Security
Council). It was based, Henry Kissinger
has written, on "a flawed premise that we
were weaker than the Soviets [when] in
fact we were stronger than they were."
That inordinate fear of a massive Com-
munist in turn the fa-
ther (John Kennedy) and
"window of vulnerability" (Ronald
Reagan. It also made it impossible to see
and
ideological split
between the Soviet and China.
In 1956, West Germany's Chancel or
Konrad Adenauer went to Moscow to
meet Soviet party Chief Nikita
Khrushchev, and came back saying that
Khrushchev had talked to him about "the
yellow peril."
In 1957, when I interviewed
Khrnahchev on a CBS panel in the Krem-
lin, the Soviet press printed the full text
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000705910004-9
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000705910004-9
At Notre Dame, in 1981, President
Reagan must said rspreed freedom, "we
espond ppportu-
nities as they arise and to create opportu-
nities where they have not existed be-
fore." In a speech in the British
Parliament in 1982 that George Will
helped to write, the President spoke of
"taking actions to assist the campaign for
democracy." In February 1983 he spoke
of America "in the vanguard of this
movement" to foster democracy.
And, finally, with the second inaugural
in 1985, the concept of aiding every-
where, from Nicaragua to Afghanistan,
those denoted as "freedom fighters"
emerged full blown. The phrases were
"human freedom on the march .... Amer-
ica its staunchest friend .... We must not
break faith with those who are risking
their lives on every continent." And, as a
pseudo-legal underpinning for what was
happening and what was to come, "Sup-
port for freedom fighters is self-defense
and totally consistent with the charters of
the Organization of American States and
the United Nations."
In his London speech, the President
had alluded to a plan called "Project De-
mocracy." In its open form, it was a plan
to sell democratic ideas around the world,
and that plan eventually emerged from
Congress as the National Endowment for
Democracy. "Our support for democracy
should not be hidden," Secretary of State
George Shultz has stated.
But President Reagan wanted to use
Project Democracy for a large-scale pro-
gram of covert action and, turned down
by Congress, he set up his own Project
Democracy inside the National Security
Council, headed by that "national hero,"
Lt. Col. OliverNorth.
Room 302 in the Executive Office
Building was the headquarters, and Room
208 the situation room, for worldwide
covert-action projects in
support of freedom fight-
ers. The center coordinated
money-raising and arms de-
liveries for the contras in
Nicaragua. It rode herd
over the invasion of
Grenada. It was in charge
of aiding the resistance in
Afghanistan and Angola
and Cambodia. It coordi-
nated the air attack on
Libya, and it fooled around
with a plan for an Ameri-
can-Egyptian invasion of
Libya. When a new covert-
action plan was proposed, colonel North
might say, "We'll get one of our Project
Democracy companies to pay for it."
"Protect Democracy companies?"
What were those? Money was collected
from private sources and foreim govern-
ments and slimmed off the Iranian arms
sales or t
com es. ect Demo in the -
tio which also man-
restiect-
enameo
able or c-
tioned like k between a CIA
coveruirectoraw Ka e MW&
And all this in the name of burnishing
the image of democracy for the third
world and the communist world!
Curiously, back in Flebruary 1983, the
Soviet government made a statement
through the Thar news agency saying
that, under the "pretext" of safeguarding
democracy, a "special coordinating cen-
ter" had been set up, headed by an assist-
ant to the President, to carry out secret
operations aimed at destabilizing un-
friendly governments. No one paid much
attention to that statement then. It now
appears that, through espionage or other
means, the Soviets had laid their hands on
a presidential directive, NSDD 77, the
charter for covert action.
So there you have 40 years of history:
The 7himan Doctrine was made by the
"wise men," which led to the Vietnam
war, made by the best and the brightest,
which led to the Reagan Doctrine, made
by cowboys with computers to fulfill the
Rambo visions of those in the White
y has survived these
House. If the countr
four decades, it can survive anything.
Adapted from, a lecture at Mon-
mouth Colege in New Jersey. Daniel
Schorr is senior now analyst with
National Public Radio. In 1948 he
was reporting from the Netherlands
for the Monitor.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000705910004-9