National Security Council Memorandum-68

National Security Council Memorandum-68 (NSC-68) was the preeminent policy document shaping U.S. strategic thinking during the early years of the Cold War. Its interpretation of the Soviet Union as an expanding, aggressive, and duplicitous power whose influence had to be checked across the globe is a hallmark of the era.

After World War II, the United States, although at peace, faced an increasingly hostile environment with its wartime ally the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union's Red Army, maintained at great strength, began occupying the country's war-exhausted neighbors—beginning with Poland in 1945. As the Soviet Union possessed nuclear weapons, the possibility of potential conflict with that country raised serious political, scientific, and moral questions among U.S. policy makers.

The Soviet Union maintained its military strength after the war; the United States, however, took a more measured approach. Pres. Harry S. Truman, fearing the economic effects of massive rearmament in peacetime, capped the defense budget at $12 billion in 1948. To review options in this tense period, Sec. of State George C. Marshall created the Policy Planning Staff in 1947 to formulate proposals and write papers on long-term foreign policy concerns and goals.

George F. Kennan, veteran diplomat and expert on Russia, became the initial director of the staff. His “long telegram” to the State Department (1946) and his anonymous article in Foreign Affairs (1947), known as the “X” article, had established the idea of containing Soviet influence and maintaining the balance of power in Europe and East Asia; such containment, Kennan believed, would guarantee U.S. national security. The chief means of containment would be diplomatic, economic, and psychological, best embodied in the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan. Containment was predicated on the assumption that the Soviets were too weak and too cautious to risk open war.

The communist coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and communist victory in the Chinese civil war in 1949 challenged Kennan's belief. After the Soviets exploded their first atomic device in autumn 1949, Truman authorized the development of a hydrogen weapon and ordered a reassessment of U.S. foreign and defense policy. Kennan, increasingly at odds with the State Department, left in 1950. His deputy, Paul Nitze, then led the policy analysis. The result was National Security Council Memorandum-68: “United States Objectives and Programs for National Security,” better known as NSC-68.

NSC-68 included Kennan's idea of “containing” Soviet action to protect U.S. national security. This would include political and economic support for allies (mostly through the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine) threatened by Soviet-backed insurgencies. But NSC-68 also recommended a greater emphasis on military means of containment, such as alliances and increased spending to maintain [Page 569]large peacetime conventional and nuclear forces. It viewed the Soviets’ foreign policy as a reflection of their despotic nature: expansionist, domineering, global in scope, and antithetical to U.S. security.

NSC-68 differed from Kennan's idea of containment, however, by emphasizing the need for massive military resources to contain Soviet action and deter future Soviet adventures. The threat of force, according to the policy makers, was required to convince the Soviets of American resolve. The mere appearance of weakness might increase the risk of war. NSC-68 placed high value on “perception” of strengths and weakness in determining Soviet action—a significant policy departure from the concept of containment.

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