I love this image and caption. Those “cheeky” Brits! The image is, of course, Kim Il Sung’s son, Kim Il Sung II, but it nicely illustrates the isolation that N Korea has endured.
A&B portray the events in Korea a wee bit different than Dr K. I don’t recall Kissinger painting Truman as needing this crisis in Asia in the same way that A&B insist on.
Also interesting for me here is this little voice going off in my head about the 1950s and “Leave it to Beaver”. The economic vitality of 1950s America that we can all picture with 3BR 2 Ba houses spreading into suburbia, tailfins on Cadillacs and TVs selling us soap… well A&B say it shouldn’t have happened.
If permanent containment was to come, and it did, than America would have a “permanent postponement of the social and economic promises of the New Deal”. (124)
So what’s up? The economic promises of the New Deal, stability, low unemployment, rising GDP all happened. Why? We were spending all our money on defense. How did everything go so “well”?
As you might have guessed I sort of think the answer is in the question. We were spending all our money on defense. If you like things that fly or go fast or are secret or all three read this;
Another chapter from Ambrose and Brinkley’s Rise to Globalism, and i still seem to find Henry Kissinger’s writing style much easier to follow.
Ambrose and Brinkley both focus on the emotions and American views of the situation, where as Kissinger is sure to include plenty of different views.
With the case of Korea, i understand the A&B make sure to accredit Truman for his tremendous values and his ability to do well under pressure.
The 1950′s in Korea were segregated: North Korea under Sung and the support of both Soviets and Chinese, whilst South Korea was under Rhee and American guidance. Four important places in the Korean war with respect to the American troops were: Pyongyang, Pusan, Seoul, and the Yalu River.
Similar to the documentary my class saw yesterday, A&B believe that America viewed the Koreans as very weak and not strong enough to even dare to fight. Yet under Truman all we wanted to do was Contain not an all-out-war or involving nuclear weapons because so many people opposed it such as MacArthur and Attlee.
And to try to answer your question about our economic standpoint: perhaps since all the money we are using for defense is technically not ours, we continue to dig a bigger hole of debt by involving ourself as americans in situations that we
when we can’t even solve our own.
Okay to be honest, I don’t really get the question. Too much econ/money talk that’s not processing. I know that A&B in the previous chapter quote Truman on NSC 68 “[...] a great military in time of peace. It meant doubling or tripling the budget, increasing taxes heavily, andd imposing various kinds of economic peace” (112). I believe that the key word in here is “peace”. After suffering the Great Deperessin and WWII, Americans wanted to take a breath. Communism was getting in the way of that. A&B mention that Truman hoped for another crisis to implememnt NSC-68 and prove that his administration was going soft on Communism. They also mention that Truman entered president with a unilaterally disarment country that followed a non-involvement policy and had turned it into a superpower and ultimately created a precedent policy as all of his successors stuck true to it. I belive that we spend money on defense to do anything to keep “peace” and maintain our superpower status.
*was not going soft on Communism
I love Kissinger, and I like Ambrose as well, however in this chapter I found myself understanding more on what Truman had done in the Korean (his contribution) whereas in Kissinger, his chapter was basically on MacArthur. As to what you said, I also find it better when there is less consumer consumption, of course it would depend on the economic situation at the moment. Right now unfortunately, we still have to consume because our economy is not as we want it, we can get there but we have to spend. It’s complicated. Back to the reading, something I found interesting that Ambrose stresses in this chapter is how Truman switched from containing Korea to liberating it, soon enough he understood that this was the error he made because of course, the U.S. was about to lose.
I never realized how much Truman got done during his presidency. It was surprising to see because his public approval rate was so low at one point when he fired MacArthur even though he had done so much. When I think of the public approval rate, I generally think that if it’s low then the President hasn’t gotten “much done,” has gotten bills or laws passed or just in general hasn’t contributed to make the United States better. But for Truman, that wasn’t the case. People were just upset that he had fired MacArthur, which I suppose is understandable because he was generally popular but I also understand why he was fired. I wonder what would have happened if we went along with MacArthur’s idea and attacked China. I wonder if Korea would have been reunited or we might be on bad terms with China somewhat like we are with Iraq because of Cold War events. The Cold War would most likely would not have lasted as long if foreign policy had shifted from containment to the supposed liberation of Communist capitals.
I just read a little phrase that stuck with me that I thought was quite cute. Ambrose was listing Truman’s accomplishments and the skill that he had of learning from his mistakes. Ambrose says that Truman had learned in 1950 not to push beyond the “bamboo curtain”! That is so clever! I think we get so caught up in the early containment policy of the 50s and the tested containment of Korea as a whole, but wasn’t all of Asia at risk in the late 50s? Did we consider China lost at this point even with Chiang on the move? I think Truman desire for efficiency and he liked to see accomplishment within his administration, but in his zealousness I believed he overlooked many situations such as the bombing of Korea itself and how the plan seemed to fail from the beginning. I think that Truman’s accomplishments gave Americans confidence and renewed their patriotism to a struggling nation straight out of dealing with Hitler.
I thought it was interesting that Ambrose and Brinkley felt that Truman was looking for an excuse to get involved in Asia, and they used Korea. I had always thought that the United States got involved in Korea to keep the peace and containment, but they make it seem like Truman jumped at the opportunity. “In June 1950 he badly needed another crisis, one that would allow him to prove to the American people that he and the Democratic Party were not soft on Communism.” “…the Democrats had to prove to the McCarthyites that they could stand up to the Communists in Asia as well as in Europe.”
It is interesting that I never saw this slant from Kissinger.
Our current economic situation isn’t something to be proud of. I’m not an economist, and I don’t know how we’re going to solve this, but if we keep letting federal debt build up, it’s all going to come crashing down eventually. You can’t conjure money out of nothing. We essentially need a little less spending and a lot more taxation. But, I digress.
This is one section where Ambrose and Kissinger’s opinions clearly differ. I don’t know why, but the way that Ambrose seemed to support the war seemed a bit unexpected or out of place to me. Given that the liberal standpoint is generally anti-war, Ambrose would not seem like the type to glorify the war, especially considering its risks and later unpopularity.
Im with you Mr. Steussy on being concerned about the future and how people wont be buying as much due to the government cuts. I think the reason why everything is so bad still even though we do spent billions of dollars on defense is because we dont have control of the enemy countries. The United States government is kind of a control freak, like back to the elections in Italy or in Iran we tried to control who got put into office there and we succeded.
Although this chapter contained basically the same information as the last chapter of Diplomacy we read, the tone was completely different. A&B idolize Truman, and highlight all of his accomplishments, while Kissinger seems to brush past them without much recognition. Although his successes can be attributed to his determination and leadership-like qualities, I think his great triumphs are due to the bad state of the nation, and the pressing need for change. Truman was presented with countless problems, and only a limited aount of time to fix them, and in that amount of time, he went on to not only solve many of the issues, but even created preventatives to future problems. In the US today, we need our government to make some serious changes. Not just changes that benefit us in the short run, but those that will guarantee the safety of the grandchildren and our future. I’m not exactly sure what that solution is, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t still be in High School. But I’m sure there is a solution out there that will have minimal short term effects, and lasting long term benefits.
One of Strebler ‘s main points on the state of the nations economy is that while the government and consumers are spending money to get the economy picking up, business isn’t spending much on investment because expectations for the economy is so low, even though increased spending should promote economic growth: its all one big self-fulfilling prophecy. Why high school students can see this while businesses can’t is beyond me, but I also might be over-simplifying the situation.
Abd although the “measure of [Truman's] triumph” may seem great at the end of his presidency, its important to remember that his popularity at the time was entirely dependent on what the public wanted. What good is change if its undesired? Greatness isn’t always goodness in the public eye: especially in a nation which so desperately wanted to return to the pre-depression status quo.