The Cold War Read Online Free Page A

departments, along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to decide what to do. In Acheson's mind, the worst policy would be one of bluff. The Russians must be certain that America would support Ankara if Turkey were attacked.
    The risks of bluffing were also uppermost in the thinking of Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal. Forrestal, a workaholic former Wall Street banker, was obsessed with the Communist threat to the point of paranoia. His obsession with the Red menace eventually forced him to resign as secretary of defense in 1949. Not long after that, he committed suicide by jumping out of a window at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center.
    When Forrestal dispatched the
Missouri
to the Straits in March, he wanted the Eighth Fleet, the striking arm of the Atlantic Fleet, to accompany it and then to remain in the Mediterranean for maneuvers as a first step toward establishing a permanent naval presence there. At the time, he told Winston Churchill that Truman had refused to send such a task force to accompany the
Missouri,
and Churchill responded that “a gesture of power not fully implemented was almost less effective than no gesture at all.” Now Forrestal was determined to send all the ships needed to confront the Russians at the mouth of the Black Sea. Throughout the sweltering Washington summer, high-level discussions between the departments of State, War, and Navy would produce one of the toughest policy recommendations yet offered to Harry Truman.
    Flanked by Forrestal and top Pentagon brass, Acheson presented the report on August 15 to the president and awaited his reaction. “In our opinion,” the report read, “the primary objective of the Soviet Union is to obtain control of Turkey…. If the Soviet Union succeeds in obtaining control of Turkey, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to prevent the Soviet Union from obtaining control over Greece and over the whole Near and Middle East.”
    Should this happen, the report went on, Moscow would be in a much stronger position to threaten India and China. “The only thing which will deter the Russians will be the conviction that the United States is prepared, if necessary, to meet aggression with force of arms.”
    The report concluded, “In our opinion therefore the time has come whenwe must decide that we shall resist with all means at our disposal any Soviet aggression and in particular, because the case of Turkey would be so clear, any Soviet aggression against Turkey.”
    The president did not hesitate. “We might as well find out,” Truman responded, “whether the Russians are bent on world conquest now as in five or ten years.” He was prepared to pursue the policy to the end.
    At this point, according to Acheson, General Eisenhower, then army chief of staff, leaned over and asked him in a whisper if it was clear to the president that the course they were recommending could lead to war. Before Acheson could reply, the president asked whether the general had something to say. Acheson repeated Eisenhower's question.
    As Acheson tells it, Truman took from his desk drawer a large map of the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean and asked those present to gather around him. Unfolding the map, Truman gave a short lecture on the historical background and current strategic importance of the region. It was vital to protect the Straits from any Soviet incursion; otherwise, he said, echoing the re-port's conclusion, Soviet troops would soon be used to control all of Turkey, and in the natural course of events, Greece and the Near East would fall under Soviet domination.
    When he finished, he turned to Eisenhower in good humor and asked if he was satisfied now that the situation was understood. Eisenhower joined the others in general laughter and said that he was.
    Four days later, Acheson reacted to the Soviet proposal. He rejected any notion that the U.S.S.R. should share responsibility with Turkey for the defense of the Straits. The Montreux Convention