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Our Name and Legacy
The Truman National Security Project is developing a new generation of progressive leaders who understand that America requires a new outlook and toolkit to tackle the national security needs of the 21st century. Our namesake is Harry Truman, who presided over the last era in which America had to entirely rethink its national security structure. His vision transformed a moment of unprecedented threat into an era of unimagined opportunity and prosperity.
Under Truman’s leadership, America creatively built an entirely new national security apparatus. We crafted alliances such as NATO; initiated our first development aid programs: the Marshall Plan and the Point 4 program; unified our separate military services into a single Department of Defense; and created the first professional intelligence agency, the CIA.
Truman's vision transformed an age of threat into a strategy to secure our country, while embedding American values of human rights and economic and political freedom.
While we need an entirely new security structure, Harry Truman’s values and “buck stops here” resolve are good guidelines for the effort at hand. Truman built NATO and created America’s modern military. However, he knew that strength without values was ultimately impotent. A true progressive, Truman ended segregation in the armed services. He recognized Israel, over the protests of many. He fed and housed millions whose lives had been torn apart by war. In doing so, he created the Marshall Plan that cemented a close bond of friendship with European allies, a bond that shored up the free world and enabled us to share our security burden.
Not every choice Harry Truman made was easy, or laudable. Some dispute the need to drop two nuclear bombs to end World War II, or fault his giving in to the red-baiting of the day by permitting a loyalty check for government officials. All positions of power bring difficult decisions. However, Truman tried throughout his presidency to create a more secure world, a world in which security was grounded in greater justice and opportunity.
“The United States does not propose to remove [difficulties] by sacrificing its ideals or its vital interests. Neither do we propose, however, to ignore the ideals and vital interests of our friends.”
Truman saw that America was facing an existential threat from Communism—and that we could not fight it alone. Despite the difficulty of working within an alliance, Truman articulated the joint threat faced by Western democracies and gained their support to create the NATO military alliance. America offered far more military help than we would receive, realizing that Western solidarity against Communism was worth the price.
“Underneath the Nazi madness were the material distress and the spiritual starvation born of poverty and despair. These evil forces were seized upon by evil men to launch their program of tyranny and aggression.”
President Truman knew that in foreign policy there are no clear lines between security, aid, trade, and diplomacy. He understood the need for strength, and realized that military and political strength required economic stability at home. He saw development done right not as “soft” policy, but as inherent to stabilizing the world and securing America. Knowing that NATO would fail without economic growth and emotional resolve in Europe, Truman supported the unprecedented Marshall Plan to jolt Europe's economy and its spirit, to keep European extremists from willingly falling into the Communist sphere.
“If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world— and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this Nation.”
Truman was not afraid of American leadership. He chose to recognize the new state of Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East, long before almost all other countries recognized the fledgling state, and against the nearly unanimous opposition of his own State Department. But Truman preferred to lead by creating situations of mutual benefit, rather than bullying. He built the multilateral institutions that shaped the world on American pillars of security, freedom, and opportunity. NATO, the Marshall Plan, the Bretton Woods economic institutions, and the European Community were bold, values-laden initiatives Truman instigated. Together, they brought to the West security and opportunity never known before, which enabled unprecedented growth, development, and well-being. The vision, values, and initiative Truman spread to Europe are now needed in other parts of the world.
Truman said of his presidency,
“I suppose that history will remember my term in office as the years when the Cold War began to overshadow our lives. I have hardly a day in office that has not been dominated by this all-embracing struggle... And always in the background there has been the atomic bomb. But when history says that my term of office saw the beginning of the Cold War, it will also say that in those eight years we have set the course that can win it.”
The Truman National Security Project hopes to forge the policies that will allow the next president to make a similar claim about the threats we face today.
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