Review

General Books

This is a study of the formation of the National Security Council (NSC), established as part of the National Security Act of 1947 to coordinate diplomatic and military policy, and its impact on early Cold War United States policies concerning containment of the Soviet Union. Sara L. Sales presents an analysis that puts the NSC at the forefront of the course of American foreign policy between 1947 and 1952. According to Sales, the NSC set priorities for the Truman administration, such as ranking Western Europe as a vital American interest. Seeking to overturn the view that President Harry S. Truman considered the NSC as an advisory committee, not a policy-making body, and made minimal use of the NSC machinery, Sales argues that Truman, although initially fearful that the NSC would intrude on his presidential prerogatives, soon recognized the need for NSC advice. At first weakened by the bureaucratic rivalries between the State and Defense Departments, the NSC soon emerged as a forum for resolving these bureaucratic conflicts. Using "the corporatist line of thinking that called for an organized and perpetual mobilization of national resources in a time of world war and cold war," the NSC devised national security policy (p. 13). The consensus that emerged formed the basis for Truman administration policies. Indeed, Truman was a minor participant in the actual coordination of foreign policy" (p. 12).	1
Policies introduced in 1947 and 1948, such as the Marshall Plan for Western Europe and the democratization and economic revival programs in Japan, were limited and reactive. Nevertheless, the Council formulated Cold War policies on Greece, Eastern Europe, Italy the North Atlantic security alliance, and the Berlin blockade. Events in 1949, such as the success of the Communist revolution in China and the Soviet detonation of an atomic bomb, began to alter NSC policies. By the time it issued the famous NSC--68 message in April 1951, the Council had emerged as "the primary formulator of Cold War strategy" (p. 135). The onset of the Korean War in 1951 further fused these developments and obliterated the distinction between vital and peripheral interests. By 1952, the NSC perceived national security policy as a global contest to check the Soviet Union. Only in two major cases did Truman make policy decisions without consulting the NSC: His decision to support the partition of Palestine and the creation of Israel, was opposed by the State Department, the military services, and the intelligence community; and he transferred nuclear weapons to the Pacific without consulting the NSC.	2
This implication that the administration, with only two major exceptions, spoke with a single voice in the pre--Korean War days is misleading. In the critical realm of defense spending, Truman held independent ideas of his own. Sales correctly points to the bureaucratic differences and even significant suspicions among the Departments of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Each service sought to strengthen its own role in the postwar defense establishment and essentially to influence the shape of defense budgets. It was not just "political fiscal conservatism" that limited defense spending from 1947 through 1949 (p. 204). Truman himself desired a balanced defense budget that would meet America's new obligations at the same time that it allowed for a balanced budget. Demands for military demobilization and Truman's objective of controlling federal spending clashed with the military establishment over the nation's growing global responsibilities. It was the Congress, especially the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, that provided the military bureaucracy, especially the Air Force, the revenues it requested. Aside from the defense spending issue, the main problem with the thesis of this book is that Sales places an inordinate emphasis on the NSC's role in its formative years. Recent scholarship and the memoirs of such trusted Truman advisors as Secretary of State Dean Acheson point to a president who used NSC advice to centralize his own foreign policy-making powers. Especially after the formation of the Truman Doctrine in early 1947, Truman articulated his own Cold War foreign policies.	3
While the book is a detailed account of the NNC's efforts to coordinate the political and military development of American containment policies, one that makes effective use of recent scholarship and the post-Cold War release of crucial documents, it offers too much detail of meetings and various memoranda for it to be useful as an assigned text for undergraduate courses in twentieth century United States foreign policy. Only those students with a solid mastery of early Cold War events and issues would find the book accessible.	4
California State University, Long Beach   Arlene Lazarowitz

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