MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Near the end of his new book, "The Lost Peace," historian Robert Dallek quotes a 17th century Swedish statesman saying this: Dost thou not know my son with what little wisdom the world is governed?
And that's just what you feel after reading to Dallek's history of the years 1945 to 1953, when the hopeful end of World War Two segued into the fearful Cold War, with the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over the planet. Robert Dallek, welcome to the program.
Professor ROBERT DALLEK (Author, "Lost Peace"): Thank you.
SIEGEL: A theme that runs through the "The Lost Peace " is miscalculation, misunderstanding by a leader in one capital of what people were thinking in another capital, misreading their intentions.
Was it for lack of enough summit conferences, enough knowledge of the other country, diplomatic missions, or just the measure of human weakness?
Prof. DALLEK: Well, I think it's more human weakness, Robert. In fact, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche has said, convictions are greater enemies of the truth than lies. And I think it was these convictions that carried these people long and down the wrong road.
Stalin, for example, who could not believe that the United States and Britain would be genuinely appreciative of the sacrifices they made in World War II, and that they were ready for an accommodation with the Soviet system and allow it to flourish and continue on into the future.
But he believed there had to be this conflict between capitalism and communism. And he had to compete with the West in an arms race and build nuclear weapons. And, of course, in the long run it did the Soviet Union in.
SIEGEL: That was a miscalculation by Stalin. Another key example, frankly, had me thinking about a contemporary issue, Afghanistan. And this was U.S. policy toward the Nationalist Chinese regime of Tchang Kai-shek in the late '40s. Tchang Kai-shek and the nationalists were barely holding on to the Chinese mainland. They were finally forced off to Taiwan by the Chinese communists.
As you write about it, there were any number of U.S. diplomats describing the fatal problems of the nationalists - corruption, loss of public support. But Washington was unable to unhitch itself from him and make a realistic policy.
Prof. DALLEK: Yes. In fact in January 1945, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai proposed coming to Washington to meet with Franklin Roosevelt.
SIEGEL: Those were the leaders of the Chinese Communist.
Prof. DALLEK: Exactly. And they wanted to, it seems, escape Stalin's clutches. They weren't so keen on this kind of embrace of Soviet communism. But the Roosevelt administration turned them aside.
You know, in the 1944 campaign, Thomas Dewey and the Republicans already began beating on the anti-communist proposition that there were subversives in the New Deal. And I think Roosevelt was frightened by this. He was deeply concerned that if he brought in the communists - and, of course, the nationalists and the China lobby, as it came to be called, would have been very much up in arms.
And so, we found ourselves tied and in foot to the nationalists and, you know, it was a sinking ship, if I may use that metaphor. Because then, of course, we know the rest of the history. The constant conflict with China - and including the Korean War where there's terrible bloodshed - and it lasts another 20 years, until Richard Nixon opens the door to Chinese relations.
SIEGEL: A great overarching question about post-war U.S. foreign policy is this: Was there really a possibility of a much less hostile relationship between the U.S. and our wartime ally, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin? Or was Stalin so ideologically driven and so paranoid, frankly, that this might have existed in theory but there was no possible side?
You seem to come out on the side that had the U.S. chosen different policies, there might have been an alternate history of Europe.
Prof. DALLEK: Yeah. Of course, Robert, we'll never know. But, you know, it seems to me, at least we could have tried to think outside the box. For example, the hydrogen bomb, George Kennan wrote a 79-page memo that he presented to Dean Acheson, secretary of State.
SIEGEL: We should explain. He was the U.S. diplomat who had been based in Moscow. He was the first head of the Policy Planning Office at State.
Prof. DALLEK: That's right. Yes. And he was a brilliant and astute diplomat who knew the Soviet Union more intimately than any other diplomat. And he believed that it was a mistake to build these hydrogen bombs.
Later, he wrote a book called "The Nuclear Delusion." And what he told the administration was: These are not usable weapons. You can't use them on a battlefield because you'll destroy your own armies. And the only place you can use them is as weapons of mass destruction against cities. And he believed that we should have gone to Stalin and raised the issue of barring the building of these, as we had ended the use of poison gas after World War I.
And he said, after all, we had something like a hundred atomic bombs. They had maybe two or three. We had this huge advantage. And if the Soviets had gone ahead to build a hydrogen bomb and they tested it, we would have known about it. We still would have this huge advantage in atomic bombs, and we could then have launched our building of a hydrogen bomb.
And so, there were possibilities to explore which we never did. Because the story is that Truman had a meeting with his special committee. He asked them can the Soviets could do it - meaning build a hydrogen bomb - they said yes. And he said we must do it, too.
SIEGEL: Do you think world leaders today understand one another better and make more rational decisions than they did 60 years ago?
Prof. DALLEK: Well, I would like to think so, Robert. But I'm not so sure. After all, look at Iran and the kinds of things they say about the Holocaust, their determination to build nuclear weapons. So it seems, you know, the North Koreans and their unrelenting militarism and totalitarian regime.
There seem to be plenty of statesmen or leaders of governments around the world who can't let go of these propositions or these convictions, as Nietzsche has said, that are really enemies of the truth.
SIEGEL: Well, Robert Dallek, thank you very much for talking with us.
Prof. DALLEK: My pleasure, Robert.
SIEGEL: Historian Robert Dallek's new book is called "The Lost Peace: Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope, 1945 to 1953."
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