The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam

by Max Boot

Yet despite these Western countermeasures, the threat from the Soviet bloc only seemed to be growing. On September 23, 1949, President Truman announced that the Soviet Union had tested an atomic bomb, breaking the American nuclear monopoly. Just eight days later, Mao Zedong announced the formation of the People’s Republic of China. America, it seemed, had entered a new age of insecurity. Two of the most powerful nations in the world were aligned against it and one of those nations possessed the ultimate weapon. Many feared that Armageddon was imminent. The well-informed British diplomat Harold Nicolson reflected the anxiety of the times when on November 29, 1948, he wrote in his diary that “Russia is preparing for the final battle for world mastery and that once she has enough bombs she will destroy Western Europe, occupy Asia, and have a final death struggle with the Americas.” He judged the odds of peace being maintained at “not one in ninety.”