Confronted with the challenge of Soviet expansionism in Greece and Turkey, Harry Truman’s call for aid to those two nations harkened back to lessons most Americans could understand in the wake of the recently ended Second World War.  In his speech to Congress on March 12, 1947, he said, “We shall not realize our objectives  … unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes.”[11] Equating the Soviet threat with that of the totalitarian regimes of the recently defeated Axis powers, Truman sold the logic of aid to a Congress and nation ill-disposed to such an idea.

However, his words did not represent a response that was “one step ahead.”  In fact, they ignored the advice of the US Chargé in Moscow George Kennan, who wrote the so-called “Long Telegram,” which along with his article in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym “X,” became the basis for Containment Policy.  Nearly a year before the President’s speech, which articulated the rationale for Truman Doctrine, Kennan had argued, “Soviet power, unlike that of Hitlerite Germany, is neither schematic nor adventuristic. It does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason it can easily withdraw – and usually does when strong resistance is encountered at any point.”[12] Such a reality called for a flexible response to challenges from the USSR.  However, as circumstances, political expediency and personal perspective combined during the Cold War, it became easier to simply apply the lessons of the Second World War to dealings with the Soviet Union than to respond to the threats posed by Communism on their own terms.

Certainly, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who promised to lead America to a New Frontier in 1960, had learned little from the events that transpired during the 1940s and 1950s.  In words very much compatible with Truman’s assessment of global politics in 1947, Kennedy’s inaugural address was an affirmation of the American Cold War agenda.  The new president asserted, “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage – and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.”[13]

The most telling thing about the Obama administration’s actions in Libya, however, is that it has apparently failed to learn from its immediate successor.  In his speech of March 28, Obama said, “Regime change there [Iraq] took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives and nearly a trillion dollars.  That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya.”[14] Still, his rhetoric and actions suggest otherwise.  How much real difference exists between Obama’s assertions about defending “The democratic values that we stand for” and George W. Bush’s State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002?  Citing Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, Bush asserted, “States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world . .  . [T]he price of indifference would be catastrophic . . .  History has called America and our allies to action, and it is both our responsibility and our privilege to fight freedom’s fight.”[15]

Moralism, whether used to justify America’s position during the Cold War, in the War on Terror, or now in Libya, is dangerous because it allows for little flexibility.  Seeing the world in black and white, good and bad, terms, decision makers leave little room for the gray which permeates most of international relations.  Even when such moralism is only a rhetorical device, it affects thinking because words have power.  They shape public discourse and expectations, the hopes of freedom-loving people elsewhere in the world (what is to be said to the Syrians, Jordanians, Yemenese, and Bahrainis when they ask for help?), and ultimately the logic of policy makers.

Although it is naïve to argue that history repeats itself, it does have a disturbing tendency to yield similar results when the assumptions that inform policy don’t change when the world does.  Events in the Middle East are only the most recent example of that fact.  Unfortunately, that only serves to prove another hackneyed cliché, philosopher George Santayana’s often-quoted but seldom heeded bromide that “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Notes

[1] “McCain and Obama Comment on Iran and Security Issues”, The Associated Press, 16 July 2008, AP Archive, http://www.aparchive.com/Search.aspx?remem=x&st=k&kw=+Obama+Purdue+University+2008+&sfs=5%3Dkw%253d%252520Obama%252520warns%252520against%252520fighting%252520the%252520last%252520war%2525202008%252520%2526kws%253d&sfc=kw%2Ckws#preview.

[2] Washington Post, 18 March 2011.

[3] Washington Post, 21March 2011.

[4] Washington Post, 29 March 2011.

[5] Barrack Obama, “Renewing American Leadership”, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/62636/barack-obama/renewing-american-leadership.

[6] President Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address, 21 January 2009, The White House Blog, http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/inaugural-address/.

[7] The New York Times, 9 October 2009.

[8] Don Wolfensberger, “Congress and Woodrow Wilson’s Military Forays Into Mexico:

An Introductory Essay,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 17 May 2004.

[9] “Security Council Approves ‘No-Fly Zone’ over Libya, Authorizing ‘All Necessary Measures’ to Protect Civilians, by Vote of 10 in Favour with 5 Abstentions,” United Nations Security Council, Department of Public Information, News and Media Division, 17 March 2011, http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/sc10200.doc.htm.

[10] Address to a Joint Session of Congress Requesting a Declaration of War Against Germany, 2 April 1917, The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=65366#axzz1I8vVljPJ

[11] Address of the President of the United States Delivered Before a Joint Session of the Senate and House of Representatives, Recommending Assistance to Greece and Turkey, 12 March 1947, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/doctrine/large/documents/index.php?documentdate=1947-03-12&documentid=5-9&pagenumber=1.

[12] The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Kennan) to the Secretary of State, 22 February 1946, United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946. Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, VI (Washington:  United States Government Printing Office, 1969), 696-709.

[13] Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 20 January 1961, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03Inaugural01201961.htm

[14] Washington Post, 29 March 2011.

[15] The President’s State of the Union Address, 29 January 2002, George W. Bush White House Archives, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html.