Cold War Veterans Blog

From a Rumsfeld speech at the Truman Library this year:
Now with the perspective of history, the many new institutions and programs of the Truman years can seem, I suppose to many people, as part of a carefully crafted, broadly supported strategy that led to what now almost seems like an inevitable victory in the Cold War.
But of course, things didn't unfold that way. That isn't the way it was in history. They never unfold quite that way. Our country was tired after the Second World War and strong strains of isolationism still persisted. Many Americans were not in the mood for global involvement on the part of the United States. And particularly against something as ill-defined as the Communist menace at the time. It wasn't as though they were engaged in a battle and you needed to respond, it was different than World War II. It was something that you couldn't quite put your hand on, you couldn't quite show a movie about it as readily. It was a time of heated disagreements. We think back now, it seems like anybody with any sense would have recognized the importance of the Cold War and of pursuing our values and our interests as a country. I don't think it would surprise anyone to hear that Harry S. Truman was a proud and enthusiastic partisan.He used to say:

"Whenever a fellow tells me he's bipartisan, I know he's going to vote against me."
And he wasn't shy about expressing his views to those who did.
Yet together, leaders of both of our political parties tended to get the big things right. And they did get the big things right. They understood that war had been declared on our country -- on the free world -- whether we liked it or not. That we had to steel ourselves against an expansionist enemy, the Soviet Union, that was determined to destroy our way of life.
A small but perhaps telling moment in the history of the Cold War took place on one of President Truman's first days in office. During his second week as President, he met with Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov. President Truman had what was described as a "tough conversation" during which he told Molotov that the Soviets were not carrying out their agreements on Poland. Molotov responded, "We are."And President Truman, as he put it, "I then explained to him in words of one syllable, exactly why they were not." After the President's typically frank reply, and undiplomatic response, Molotov apparently said to President Truman, "I have never been talked to like that in my life." Truman replied, "Carry out your agreements and you won't be talked to like that again." Sounds reasonable to me. In a sense, that quintessentially American candor would prove to be a valuable attribute in winning the struggle against the Soviet Union. We knew that our free system of government was vastly preferable to their dictatorship. That when given a real choice, the natural desire of men and women is to be free. And that the task of free people was to hold firm, to defend ourselves over many long decades, and trust that the truth would eventually win out.

You can easily find volumes of speeches where SecDef uses the Cold War to make a point. It was always a critical time for us when he speaks of it. Now that it is behind us, it is just a matter of convenience for him to evoke the memory of the Cold War to sell policy. Still, there must be other statesmen and decorated and respected military Veterans who know what the Cold War was. Those that talk about it with respect for the men and women who stuck it out until victory was ours.

Paul V. Dudkowski
US Navy, 1973 to 1978
Director, Mountain West Operations
Public Affairs Director