(4 of 6)
The side with the initiative and the power to choose the point of concentration has an enormous advantage. In the struggle with Communism, the U.S. starts with the strategic initiative because the U.S. has the mobility that goes with sea & air power. President Truman tosses aside this enormous advantage when he takes the position that the U.S. should not go after the enemy except in those geographical areas where the enemy has recently committed aggression. This gives the enemy full freedom to concentrate and then commit aggression wherever the free world is weak. Truman's principle relieves the enemy of all concern for security.
Truman used Greece as a shining example of his policy of geographically limited war. It might be useful to consider the new Truman principle as applied to Greece—if that civil war had turned out the way China's did. In this supposition, General Markos' Greek Reds sweep the mainland. The anti-Communist Greek leader, an unpopular but steadfast fellow called Apericles, retires with an army of several hundred thousand to the island of Crete. The Greek Reds, instead of going after Apericles, attack Turkey. The U.S. and the U.N. go to Turkey's aid. The war gets difficult and General Legion, the American commander of the U.N. forces in Turkey, proposes to blockade Piraeus, the port of Athens, and to help General Apericles establish a beachhead on the mainland and hit the flank of the Greek Reds.
Under the Truman principle, General Legion should be fired for trying to widen or spread the war. It would be moral for American boys to die on the brown hills of Anatolia but immoral to help anti-Communist Greeks fight the same enemy on the brown plain of Thrace.
Truman did not always have this idea, unique in world history, that it is wrong and dangerous to fight the enemy in any place not of the enemy's choosing. In fact, Truman was proceeding on the opposite (or MacArthur) principle when he issued his great statement of June 27, 1950. The Reds had invaded South Korea and Truman proclaimed to the world that the U.S. would resist this aggression. He did not, however, limit his action to Korea. In the same brief statement he said that the U.S. would defend Formosa (this decision reversed an Acheson policy) and give additional aid to anti-Communist forces in the Philippines and Indo-China.
To punish the enemy for invading Korea, Truman was willing last June to fight Korean Communists, Filipino Communists and Viet Minh Communists. All that MacArthur suggested was that he be allowed to fight some different Chinese Communists from the ones who were fighting him. No, said the President on April 11, that would be widening the war.
Two Ways of Trying To Crush Aggression
Yet Harry Truman clearly recognizes the unity of the Communist enemy. In his speech he said: "The Communists in the Kremlin are engaged in a monstrous conspiracy to stamp out freedom all over the world. If they were to succeed, the United States would be numbered among their principal victims . . . The only question is: When is the best time to meet the threat, and how? The best time to meet the threat is in the beginning. It is easier to put out a fire in the beginning when it is small than after it has become a roaring blaze."