NSC-68 (National Security Report)

Official report written in 1950 that was one of the critical U.S. government documents defining the Cold War and establishing the U.S. strategy for winning that war.

Paul H. Nitze of the state department wrote the National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) at the behest of Secretary of State Dean Acheson. The report forecast a Soviet capability to attack the United States with nuclear weapons by 1954. It called for increased U.S. arms spending to destroy the Soviet Union and give the United States unmatched military capabilities.

President George W. Bush listens as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao makes a point during a press conference in the Oval Office of the White House on December 9, 2003. During meetings at the White House, President Bush encouraged Wen to help resolve the year-old North Korean nuclear crisis. The continued development of nuclear weapons by North Korea has been a vital concern of the United States, which wants to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Such weapons in the hands of a rogue state such as North Korea is especially worrisome.

Corbis.

Specifically, NSC-68 was a top secret internal document designed to convince President Harry S. Truman to increase military spending well above the low limits he had set in the downsizing after World War II. Initially, Truman refused to increase spending, but the outbreak of the Korean War convinced him to spend more on defense. The defense budget soon doubled and then tripled.

NSC-68 remilitarized the United States and set up a permanent war economy and national security structure. It used national security to justify the right of the United States to claim scarce resources anywhere in the world.

The report said that “Soviet domination of the potential power of Eurasia, whether achieved by armed aggression or by political and subversive means, would be strategically and politically unacceptable to the United States.”[Page 532] NSC-68 revealed the mindset of U.S. cold warriors. It begins by explaining that World War II had ended the German and Japanese empires and the exhaustion of the French and British ones. The report noted that two great powers remained standing and in competition for world dominance and leadership—the United States and the Soviet Union. One of these two powers, the United States, stood for good, whereas the other, the Soviet Union, was evil.

NSC-68 assumed that the Soviet Union wanted to expand until it controlled the Eurasian landmass, and that its eventual goal was world domination. The threat was of such magnitude that it might destroy the United States, if not civilization itself. Thus, however unwillingly, the United States faced a mortal challenge from the Soviets. To counter the threat, the United States had to dominate the world and create an environment amenable to its survival and prosperity.

Realistically, the United States would have pursued this course whether or not the Soviet threat existed. But because the threat existed, the United States had to contain it while protecting the free world. The containment of communism and the protection of freedom would require a strong military deterrent. Soviet aggression or sponsorship of aggression by others might well require the military to defeat aggression, whether limited or total.

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