| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Arnold A. Offner. Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945–1953. (Stanford Nuclear Age Series.) Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2002. Pp. xv, 626. $37.95.

Arnold A. Offner's book is reminiscent of Cold War revisionism of forty years ago. This analysis of U.S. policy, however, is more sophisticated than the works of that earlier generation of writers, as Offner makes full use of the American documentary record and the revelations gained by the limited opening of the former Soviet Union's archives. He also summarizes the historiography of several important issues, so that postrevisionism is acknowledged, even if found to be wanting. Offner dutifully acknowledges that the origins of the Cold War are complex, but his account places major principal responsibility on the United States, especially its hapless president. Contrary to the popular image of a gutsy, no-nonsense, decisive leader who stood up to the Soviet Union, Harry S. Truman, according to Offner, was an insecure, misinformed, parochial nationalist whose ill-considered, insensitive, and belligerent policies precipitated and exacerbated the Cold War. 1

This is the third major study of Truman's national security policy written in the last decade. Melvyn P. Leffler's monumental A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration and the Cold War (1992) and Michael J. Hogan's provocative A Cross of Iron: Harry S Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954 (1998) find, as have most postrevisionist scholars, that the containment policy in Europe, while flawed, served U.S. interests, but both are critical of its ramifications. Leffler, who characterizes Truman and his national security managers as at once "wise, prudent, and foolish," faults especially the exaggeration of Soviet aggressiveness and the threat of communism in the Third World. Hogan questions whether American security, particularly as defined in NSC-68, necessitated the political, economic, and social price that the Truman administration demanded. . . .

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