ABSTRACT
President Truman, who won reelection in 1948, managed to turn Cold War tensions to his own advantage when he helped create North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. The president had three alternatives: pull out; use force to open access to Berlin, perhaps starting World War III in the process; or fly over the blockaded routes with supplies. By the late 1940s, as the battlefields cooled, the war dead were buried, and the world faced the unknown nuclear age, Americans were the richest people on the globe-indeed, the richest in recorded history. The achievement of racial justice, therefore, could strengthen American diplomacy. Despite the limited nature of the mobilization, the Korean War greatly bolstered the American economy. In April 1949 twelve nations (United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Portugal, and Luxembourg) pledged that each would consider an attack on one as an attack on all and that each would respond as it deemed necessary.
