A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954

by Michael J. Hogan

A Cross of Iron provides the fullest account yet of the national security state that emerged in the first decade of the Cold War. Michael J. Hogan traces the process of state-making through struggles to unify the armed forces, harness science to military purposes, mobilize military manpower, control the defense budget, and distribute the cost of defense across the economy. President Harry S. Truman and his successor were in the middle of a fundamental contest over the nation's political identity and postwar purpose, and their efforts determined the size and shape of the national security state that finally emerged.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

540 pages, Paperback

First published August 28, 1998

About the author

Michael J. Hogan (born 1943) is an American academic who has served in the administrations or on the faculty of many American universities, wrote or edited numerous books, contributed as an adviser to the U. S. Department of State and several documentaries. Currently he is a distinguished professor of history at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the United States found itself facing a dilemma. With the isolationist preference of many Americans discredited by the attack on Pearl Harbor, policymakers in Washington, D.C. sought to develop a new national security policy that addressed the threat posed by the Soviet Union to American interests throughout the world. This policy was forged in a series of debates that took place between presidents, legislators, generals, admirals, and others over the course of nearly a decade. It was through this often-contentious discourse that the modern national security state was born, one that would largely endure unaltered for the next generation and which continues to serve as the framework for it today.

In this book, Michael Hogan recounts these debates in detail, identifying the main participants, explaining the views they brought to it, and describing the how the conflicts between them defined the parameters of America’s Cold War national security policy. At the center of this was the president, Harry S. Truman. Though he possessed clear preferences of his own, Hogan sees within his decisions an effort to resolve these with the conflicting demands expressed by others, such as budgetary pressures, the popular pressure to demobilize, and the need for an effective national defense. Hoping to balance the need for a robust military that could defend the nation with his desire to preserve and even expand the welfare state created by the New Deal, Truman sought to satisfy America’s defense needs with a program of universal military training (UMT) that would allow for an affordable military establishment.

Such an idea was staunchly opposed by many on both the left and the right, who feared that measures such as UMT would bring about a militarized “garrison state” and undermine American freedoms. While acknowledging the need for a strong national defense, conservative opponents such as Senator Robert Taft believed that this could be achieved most effectively by relying upon the atomic bomb and an air arm large enough to deliver it. Such advocacy became entangled in the perennial competition between the Army and the Navy for funding and status, with their combined demands threatening to bust the federal budget. Eager to lower taxes, some conservatives sought to use the requests for air groups and aircraft carriers as cudgels to beat down the welfare state they had opposed since the 1930s, adding a further wrinkle to these debates.

This discourse played out within the context of the emergent Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Initially budgetary concerns were paramount, as Truman sought to reduce expenditures from their unsustainable wartime levels. Achieving the levels he sought became impossible as the Soviet challenge grew, however. With this emerging threat came a new breed of tough-minded national security experts, who called for a proactive response to it while disagreeing on the best means to pose it. This shaped the transformation of the federal government, with the creation of an independent air force, the merging of the armed services into a single Department of Defense, and the formalization of a national security leadership to advise the president.

Hopes that such an organization would reduce both costs and interservice conflict were frustrated by events. With Truman seeking a range of deterrents, including atomic weapons and foreign aid, and Taft and other prominent conservatives calling for a less flexible but more affordable reliance on air-atomic power for the bulk of national defense, a middle way emerged by 1950 that shaped the national security state in ways that addressed the fears of its opponents. The outbreak of the Korean War, however, ended hopes that the federal budget might be brought under control, as the demands of “semiwar” half a world away ensured that the federal government continued to spend heavily on the warfare state in order to wage it.

Though Dwight Eisenhower promised a “new look” that would deliver national security at lesser cost, Hogan sees his defense policies as having more in common with Truman than either president cared to admit. That Eisenhower largely continued Truman’s national security policies cemented the postwar approach, which was now guided by an establishment of shared views regardless of their party. That the institutions that emerged from this consensus remain central to national security today underscores the importance of Hogan’s book as a study of its subject. Understanding it often requires the reader to wade into the tedious and repetitive details of the annual budget battles that were the field on which these debates were decided. Yet Hogan’s book more than rewards the persistence of anyone interested in the origins of today’s national security state, and how it emerged from the contradictory goals of the policymakers who created it.

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an institutional history of the growth of the "national security state" in the US in the ten years following the end of WWII. Put as a question, how did the structure of the US government evolve from the ad hoc mobilization of WWII with separate armed forces, no air force, and a greatly reduced government bureaucracy into the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower warned of at the close of his presidency?

This is an institutional history, so it doesn't focus on much on people as it does on laws, organization structures, ideas and ideologies - all tied together around key events, such as the fight for National Security Act of 1947 or the outbreak of the Korean War. Hogan ties together this story of the complex evolution of the government into a new and different from from what came before WWI in terms of the interplay of three ideologies -- ideas that organize and motivate how we think about government. The first ideology is traditional America, with limited government, citizen soldiers, temporary mobilizations, and limited American involvement in foreign affairs. The second ideology is the welfare or new deal state that has a positive role for government in providing social services, more government regulation, larger government, and higher taxes. The third ideology is the Garrison State - a picture of America in a constant state of readiness to defend freedom against the threat of world communism as located in the USSR and later in the People's Republic of China. The national security state evolved as advocates for these three ideological visions fought over defense spending, budgets, taxes, organization of the armed forces, the future of research and development, and other things.

In a nutshell, you can make sense of the evolution of the US national security apparatus in the Cold War as the interaction of the three big sets of ideas, as translated into particular situations and conflicts.

This is a very good history. Clear and persuasive arguments, with lots of detail and documentation of all key points (and perhaps a bit more). I enjoy reading ideological and organizational histories because I think that much that is important in government happens through these dynamics.

This is not an easy book to read, however. It is long, detailed, with lots of names and events to remember. The chapters are also long (50 pages or so) and the syllable count is high. This is not likely to be a good beach book. The author appears to realize this and makes a point of summarizing his arguments towards the end of each chapter. These summaries are helpful.

The book is worth the effort. This story provides a continuity between the WWII era and the military/political context of Vietnam and afterwards. The story also resonates loudly with current debates on similar topics. How to handle the deficit? What to do with the military after Iraq and Afghanistan? What are the trade-offs in government spending between large national security expenditures, large and perpetual debt payments, and social and health programs? These are the same questions that were being asked by policy makers then -- and the atmosphere appears to have been as partisan then as it is now. The key people involved are there but not excessively. This is not a biography or a set of character studies.

[Windsor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had a hard time giving this book four stars. It probably deserved three, but it is too well written to not get four. It is misleading in the title (a little more domestically focused than I’d like it to be), but it has a good national mood on creating a state to deal with a threat that has never existed. That part of this book is fascinating to me. A worthy read, but if someone else gave this three stars, I would understand why.

[David Bates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Hogan explores post-war transformations in his 1998 study A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954. To Hogan the construction of the warfare state was guided in large part by an emergent national security ideology which challenged both the traditional republicanism of conservatives and the welfare state priorities of liberals. Acknowledging his debt to Clifford Geertz, Hogan defines ideologies as “formal, coherent systems of belief that usually emerge in periods of crisis, influence the way people make sense of the world, and enable them to act politically.” For Americans, the crisis of the Second World War, when “the age of isolationism had gone up in smoke at Pearl Harbor,” marked a decisive turn toward international engagement. Hogan observes that the creation of the military-industrial-scientific complex was hardly inevitable however, citing the sharp draw down of military spending following the victory over Japan. Instead, the sense of both vulnerability and American exceptionalism created support among voters for a new national security ideology. Invoking the existential threat posed by a, deceitful, ruthless and determined totalitarian enemy, an Other to which America’s own identity was diametrically opposed, advocates of the national security state sought to create institutions for permanent mobilization against external threats and internal subversion. The unification of the armed forces, an expanded defense budget, the yoking of scientific research to military ends and the creation of the CIA and NSA crystalized in the late 1940s as the United States and the Soviet Union became locked in the early stages of the Cold War.

While both congressional liberals and conservatives fretted about the militarization of American society, its potential to undermine democracy, and the specter of the devolution to an authoritarian garrison state of permanent mobilization, each side also found national security to be a politically useful bludgeon against the other. Liberals accused conservatives of isolationism and embraced international engagement, while conservatives went along with swollen defense budgets which forestalled any further expansion of the welfare state. Hogan positions both Truman and Eisenhower as playing a similar role, accepting the growth of the national security state but also attempting to contain its relentless consumption of resources in order to make room for domestic spending priorities, and preserve the nation’s democratic character by asserting their own prerogatives of civilian control over military decision making. “Put another way,” Hogan concludes “the most important constraints on the national security state were those built into the country’s democratic institutions and political culture.” He nevertheless acknowledges that “democracy also took a beating” in the first decade of the Cold War in the form of McCarthyism, loyalty programs, violated civil liberties, and the centralization of unaccountable power in the military and intelligence services

[Kenneth Barber · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the end of WWII, America was the super power of the world. They had the atomic bomb and had just won the war. They were challenged by the Soviet Union who was refusing to abide by agreements mad at Yalta and were refusing to allow free elections in Poland and leave the countries of Eastern Europe. This situation led to what the author calls the “Great Debate “ in the United States. A new philosophy of our role in the world and how to stop communism began. The national security philosophy held that we were in a constant state of war and we had to defend democracy everywhere in the world to stop the spread of communism. This required a large military, sacrifice of domestic needs and deficit spending. On the other side of the debate were the people who believed in pulling back our commitments and balancing the budget. Simply put it was a question of a welfare state or warfare state.
Truman believed that we must protect against spread of communism, but still wanted domestic benefits with a balanced budget. The military wanted large expenditures on military hardware and standing forces even at the expense of an unbalanced budget. The conservatives felt we should draw back from foreign entanglements and worry about ourselves.
World events played a large role in these debates. The Soviet refusal to vacate Eastern Europe, their acquisition of the atomic bomb, their takeover of Czechoslovakia and the Berlin blockade all heightened the arguments.
The US response were the aid to Greece and Turkey, the Berlin airlift, the Marshall Plan and NATO. Domestically we passed the National Security Act which created the Department of Defense, the CIA, and the NSC. The NSC-68 document also had a huge effect. We also began the loyalty program which in turn fueled McCarthy fiasco.
The book details how all these issues were debated in the context of the budget. The issue of domestic needs vs the demands of national security were centered around the budget and deficit spending.

The book lays the foundation for the Cold War and has influenced our political scene even today.

[Melissa Maxwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is very informative but long winded. good info but if you are not interested in the subject I am not sure you would like it.