March 7, 2015

Finest Hour 157, Winter 2012-13

Page 48

By David Freeman

Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War, by Frank Costigliola. Hardbound, illus., 544 pp., $35, Kindle edition $19.25.

An old argument in Cold War history holds that if only Truman had been nicer to Stalin at the end of World War II, the subsequent Cold War might have been avoided or mitigated. A professor of history at the University of Connecticut now takes up this thesis anew, arguing that the death of Franklin Roosevelt removed the one personality who could have reassured Stalin sufficiently to produce a more agreeable postwar world.

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Following Roosevelt’s death during the closing days of the war in Europe, Harry Truman became responsible for American foreign policy. Lacking any knowledge or experience of dealing with the Soviet leader, he relied on the advice of American diplomats who had served in Moscow, such as Averell Harriman and George Kennan. After witnessing many of Stalin’s atrocities and betrayal of agreements, the State Department’s “Soviet experts” counseled stern confrontation with the Kremlin boss. According to Costigliola, the notoriously insecure Stalin mainly wanted to safeguard his country against another German invasion—playing “the Cold War card…was not his first choice.”

After being challenged by Truman, however, and with the slightly sympathetic Churchill removed from power by election, the Russian leader felt constrained to take the steps he believed necessary to safeguard his country. This meant the brutal occupation of east-central Europe and the development of the nuclear arms race.

Roosevelt, it is argued, would have looked past Stalin’s atrocities and the violation of some pledges in order to achieve the greater good of a less confrontational world. A comparable example that did come to pass was Richard Nixon’s decision to open a dialogue with Communist China despite the horrifying record of Mao Tse-tung.

That at least is the theory, but counterfactual speculation is not history. Costigliola’s argument can never be proven or disproven. Tellingly, it primarily finds support among those with highly favorable opinions of Roosevelt, and dances around the grey region between respect and idolatry. Even Harri-man appears to have repented of his role in the early Cold War and to have given credence to the theory, by saying if Roosevelt had lived things could well have been different, because, Harriman said, “Roosevelt could lead the world.”

Anthony Eden once stated flatly that “the deplorable turning point in the whole relationship of the Western Allies with the Soviet Union was caused directly by the death of Roosevelt.” But there are many problems with this idea, including the need of Eden and Harri-man to protect their reputations.

It does not follow that any new agreements made by Roosevelt and Stalin would have held any more than the wartime agreements already violated, or that the Soviet establishment necessarily would go along with everything the aging Stalin pledged. Churchill is criticized for promoting a postwar Anglo-American alliance that fed Stalin’s paranoia. What else was Churchill to do? Lend-Lease and Marshall Aid were not coming from Moscow. And in their absence, whither western Europe?

Costigliola emphasizes the personal element of diplomacy, an area in which Roosevelt was unsurpassed. Thus, the President’s cardinal error in this account seems to have been not taking better care of himself and alienating advisers who could take a broad view of Stalin. But how would FDR have coped with an opposition-controlled Congress after 1946? Could he have bent it to his will while Stalin achieved similar success with the Red Army and the Politburo? Certainly personalities matter in negotiations; but the powers behind those personalities matter more.