Truman(68)

Doing so was not made easier by the fact that there was already widespread distrust of MacArthur in Washington, not only for his politics but for his generalship. John Foster Dulles was in Tokyo at the time of the North Korean attack, and had been deeply shocked that none of the General’s aides had the courage to rouse him.8 Dulles had to do it himself, and on his return, most ironically as events were to work out, used his position as the senior Republican attached to the State Department to advise Truman that he ought forthwith to replace MacArthur with a younger and more vigorous general (MacArthur was 70).

Truman acted throughout that last week of June with more than sufficient deliberate speed to justify his daughter’s summing up of the march of events: ‘Step by step, in six fateful days, searching for alternatives before each move, my father found himself fighting his third war.’10 The speed was greater than the deliberateness. It was partly responsible for Truman making two, maybe three, of his four mistakes of the week.

First, he authorized United States naval and air action sixteen hours in advance of the second UN resolution which gave him the authority of international legality. The Soviet union   and its apologists were later to make mildly effective play with this. It was however a very minor fault, and one on the right side.

Second, he omitted throughout to get any authority from the Congress for his actions. He held quite a lot of informal consultations on a cross-party basis with the leaders at the White House, but he sent no formal message on the war until July 19th. He just acted under executive prerogative, citing many precedents, but for the commitment of troops rather than the engagement in hostilities. It was not that he was without warning—Taft fired quite a powerful shot across his bows on the Wednesday—or that he doubted his ability to obtain a quick majority: a bill to extend selective service for one year went through the House by 315 to 4 and the Senate by 76 to nil. It was more his determination to get on with things and to defend, indeed enhance, the prerogatives of the presidency. It was probably an error of medium proportions. Robert Donovan in a chapter entitled ‘A Costly Mistake’ wrote: ‘The political rather than the legal aspect of war without congressional approval was to hurt Truman, to make the prosecution of the war more difficult for him, and to cause future public concern about what was to be called the ‘‘imperial presidency”.’11 Acheson controverted (in advance) this thesis. The difficulties of the war followed from the difficulties of the war and not from lack of a congressional vote. And while such a vote would in itself have manifestly done no harm, the process of obtaining it might well have done a great deal. His not altogether surprising conclusion was that the President, advised by Acheson, was therefore right. Nevertheless Truman’s method of procedure established a precedent which thereafter effectively deprived the Congress of the power to authorize or prevent war, which had explicitly been bestowed upon it by the Constitution.

Third, and stemming to some extent from his desire not ‘to go to war’9 and his decision not to go to Congress, he publicly underplayed the seriousness of the issues and the size of the stakes. This was one reason for the ‘business as usual’, semi-secret approach of the Saturday evening, Sunday and Monday. By the Thursday it coalesced with one of his most frequent and unfortunate habits, that of allowing reporters to put words into his mouth, to create a phrase which was to reverberate against him for the next two years and more. At a press conference he denied that the United States was at war. ‘Mr President, would it be correct,’ he was then asked, ‘…to call this a police action under the United Nations?’ ‘Yes, that is exactly what it amounts to,’ he replied. The trouble was that police actions which cost half a million casualties on the law and order side are liable to be regarded as somewhat bungled.

The fourth mistake never surfaced. Chiang Kai-shek, as anxious as Louis Johnson and MacArthur to get his own defence muddled up with that of South Korea, rushed in to offer 33,000 Nationalist troops which were to be equipped and transported by the United States. Truman clutched at this straw as a possible alternative to the commitment of US ground forces. Acheson and the Chiefs of Staff joined forces to get him away from the idea. This required only one meeting. The scheme would have been somewhat wasteful in resources and gravely damaging to the prospect for military contributions from other members of the United Nations.

These blemishes apart, and none of them was of the first order, Truman’s performance during what was arguably the most crucial week of his presidency was of a very high quality. He paused enough to consider the options but never so long as to lose the initiative. As a result he married the military potential of the United States with the moral authority of the United Nations to sustain his policy of containment. It was a remarkable feat. He astonished the world, and certainly the Soviet union  , by the resoluteness of his response.