ABSTRACT
In Harry S. Truman’s approach to international politics, the United States (US) must be prepared to resist Soviet-inspired communism everywhere in the world if it was to be successful in defeating it anywhere. In 1949, China had emulated the Soviet Union by bringing a communist government to power through revolution, and in February 1950 its leader, Mao Tse-tung, had signed a military alliance with the Soviet Union. By 1964, when Lyndon Johnson was president, the globalism of Truman’s era had become the imperialism of Kennedy and Johnson—whereby America was prepared to “pay any price in the cause of freedom,” to paraphrase Kennedy’s inaugural address in January 1961. When the North Korean army attacked South Korea on June 24, 1950, President Truman saw this as a direct and serious Soviet attack on the very basis of postwar US foreign policy. The executive branch seemed to be united from the beginning in favor of confronting the Soviets on the issue of Korea.
