Dwight Eisenhower’s First Political Office Was That of _____

Dwight D. Eisenhower brought a “New Expect” to U.S. national security policy in 1953. The main elements of the New Look were: (i) maintaining the vitality of the U.S. economy while nevertheless building sufficient strength to prosecute the Cold War; (2) relying on nuclear weapons to deter Communist assailment or, if necessary, to fight a war; (three) using the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to deport out cloak-and-dagger or covert actions against governments or leaders “directly or indirectly responsive to Soviet command”; and (iv) strengthening allies and winning the friendship of nonaligned governments. Eisenhower’s defense policies, which aimed at providing “more than bang for the buck,” cut spending on conventional forces while increasing the budget for the Air Force and for nuclear weapons. Even though national security spending remained high—it never roughshod below l percent of the budget during Eisenhower’s presidency—Eisenhower did residual iii of the eight federal budgets while he was in the White House.

“Eisenhower did rest three of the viii federal budgets while he was in the White House”

Nuclear Affairs

Nuclear weapons played a controversial function in some of Eisenhower’southward diplomatic initiatives, including the President’south attempt to end the Korean War. As promised, Eisenhower went to Korea afterward he was elected but before he was inaugurated. The trip provided him with no articulate solution for ending the war. But during the spring of 1953, U.S. officials attempted to send indirect hints to the Chinese government that Eisenhower might expand the war into China or even use nuclear weapons. Some historians call back that these veiled threats may have encouraged the Chinese to reach a settlement. An increase in conventional U.S. military pressure during the spring of 1953 may have had a greater effect on the willingness of the Chinese and North Koreans to negotiate a settlement. In that location is also reliable evidence that the Soviet leaders who came to power after Stalin’south death in March 1953 worried about U.S. escalation and pressed for an stop to the war. Both sides fabricated concessions on the question of the repatriation of prisoners of state of war, and the armistice went into effect in July 1953. Korea remained divided along the 38th parallel, roughly the same purlieus as when the war began in 1950.

I of the legacies of the Korean State of war was that U.South.-Chinese relations remained hostile and tense. Like Truman, Eisenhower refused to recognize the Red china (PRC). Instead, he continued to back up Jiang Jieshi’s (Chiang Kai-shek’southward) Nationalist Chinese regime in Taiwan. After PRC guns began shelling the Nationalist Chinese islands of Jinmen (Quemoy) and Mazu (Matsu) in September 1954, Congress granted Eisenhower the authority to use U.S. military power in the Taiwan Strait. The President knew that these specks of territory had no real strategic value but that they had symbolic importance, as both the PRC and the Nationalists claimed to be the only legitimate ruler of all of China. The crisis escalated when Eisenhower declared at a news conference that in the event of war in Due east Asia, he would authorize the use of tactical nuclear weapons confronting military targets “exactly as y’all would use a bullet.” Eisenhower privately deplored Jiang’southward stubbornness, simply his own actions contributed to a crisis that seemed increasingly dangerous. The battery finally stopped in April 1954, although it is by no means certain that Eisenhower’s nuclear warnings accounted for the PRC decision to end the crisis. Mao Zedong often questioned the brownie of U.Due south. threats and insisted that the Chinese could withstand whatsoever losses that came from a nuclear attack. U.S. and Red china negotiators met in intermittent negotiations, only a 2nd Taiwan Strait crunch occurred in 1958.

U.South.-Soviet Relations

Just weeks afterwards Eisenhower became President, Stalin’s expiry brought what appeared to be significant changes in Soviet international policy. Stalin’s successors began calling for negotiations to settle East-Due west differences and to rein in the arms race. Nikita Khrushchev, who established himself as the principal leader in the Kremlin in 1955, called his policy “peaceful coexistence,” all the same Eisenhower remained skeptical of Soviet rhetoric. He used a sexist metaphor to explain his thinking to Prime Minister Winston Churchill: “Russian federation was . . . a woman of the streets and whether her dress was new, or just the sometime one patched, there was the aforementioned whore underneath.” The President insisted on deeds that matched words, and in 1955, the Soviets changed their position and ended a prolonged deadlock in negotiations over a peace treaty with Republic of austria. Eisenhower so agreed to a summit of Soviet and Western leaders in Geneva, Switzerland, in July 1955, the first such coming together since the Potsdam Briefing in 1945.

The “Spirit of Geneva” eased tensions between the Soviets and the U.s.a., fifty-fifty though the conference failed to produce agreements on arms command or other major international problems. Khrushchev rejected Eisenhower’s proposal for an “Open Skies” program that would have allowed both sides to use aerial air surveillance to gather information about each other’s military capabilities. The president was inappreciably surprised past Khrushchev’due south conclusion; Eisenhower had made the Soviet leader an offering that would be difficult to accept while knowing that the proposal, whatever the Soviet reaction, would make a favorable impression on international public opinion. A year later, the President authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to brainstorm tiptop-secret intelligence flights over the Soviet Union past using the make-new high altitude U-ii reconnaissance planes.

“Peaceful coexistence” did not extend to eastern Europe. In November 1956, Soviet tanks ruthlessly suppressed Republic of hungary’s efforts to follow an independent grade gratis from Soviet domination. Administration officials had advocated the liberation of Soviet satellites, and propaganda agencies such every bit Radio Complimentary Europe and the Voice of America had encouraged Eastern Europeans to resist. Eisenhower, notwithstanding, decided not to take activeness to assist the Hungarian liberty fighters since any intervention carried the take chances of starting a U.S.-Soviet war that could lead to a nuclear commutation. In the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the administration toned down its rhetoric about liberation and instead emphasized hopes for gradual—and peaceful—progress toward freedom.

During his terminal years in office, Eisenhower hoped to achieve a détente with the Soviet Union that could produce a treaty banning the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere and oceans. Hopes rose later on Khrushchev visited the Us in September 1959 and met with Eisenhower at the presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains. This height produced no arms command agreement, just it did lead to adept volition and optimism known every bit “the spirit of Camp David.” Eisenhower and Khrushchev agreed to see once again, forth with the leaders of French republic and Britain, in Paris in May 1960.

The summit collapsed, even so, in anger and bitterness in a dispute over the U-two incident. As the meeting with Khrushchev approached, Eisenhower authorized some other U-2 flight over Soviet territory. Damaged by a surface-to-air missile, the U.Due south. plane crashed on May 1, 1960, during the Soviet celebration of May 24-hour interval. Not knowing that the Soviets had captured the pilot, the State Department and the White House issued a series of cover stories that the Kremlin exposed as lies. Despite his embarrassment, Eisenhower took responsibility for the failed U-2 mission and asserted that the flights were necessary to protect national security. Khrushchev tried to exploit the U-2 incident for maximum propaganda value and demanded an apology from the President when they met in Paris. Eisenhower refused, Khrushchev stormed out of the meeting, and the emerging détente became instead an intensified Cold War. Eisenhower was so distraught that he even talked about resigning.

Covert Activeness

Eisenhower prosecuted the Cold War vigorously even as he hoped to improve Soviet-American relations. He relied frequently on covert action to avert having to take public responsibility for controversial interventions. He believed that the CIA, created in 1947, was an effective musical instrument to counter Communist expansion and to assist friendly governments. CIA tactics were sometimes unsavory, every bit they included bribes, subversion, and even bump-off attempts. But Eisenhower authorized those actions, even as he maintained plausible deniability, that is, advisedly concealing all evidence of U.S. involvement and so that he could deny whatever responsibleness for what had happened.

During his first year in office, Eisenhower authorized the CIA to deal with a problem in Islamic republic of iran that had begun during Truman’s presidency. In 1951, the Iranian parliament nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Visitor, a British corporation that controlled the nation’s petroleum manufacture. The British retaliated with economic force per unit area that created havoc with Iran’s finances, but Prime Government minister Mohammed Mossadegh refused to yield. Eisenhower worried about Mossadegh’south willingness to cooperate with Iranian Communists; he too feared that Mossadegh would somewhen undermine the ability of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a staunch anti-Communist partner. In Baronial 1953, the CIA helped overthrow Mossadegh’s government and restore the shah’southward power. In the aftermath of this covert activeness, new arrangements gave U.S. corporations an equal share with the British in the Iranian oil manufacture.

A year later, the CIA helped overthrow the elected government of Guatemala. Eisenhower and his top directorate worried that President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán was too willing to cooperate with local Communists, even though they had just a limited role in his authorities. Contempo scholarship has shown that Arbenz was a Marxist, although he revealed his political convictions only to a few confidants. Arbenz likewise believed that Republic of guatemala, because of its low level of economic development, required meaning reform before it would be ready for Communism. Arbenz’southward program of land reform was a stride toward modernizing Guatemala as well as creating the atmospheric condition for an eventual Marxist state. The land reform, however, produced strong opposition, as it involved confiscating large tracts from the United Fruit Company and redistributing them to landless peasants, who made upward a majority of the Guatemalan population. American fears reached new heights when Arbenz bought weapons from Communist Czechoslovakia after the administration cut off Guatemala’s admission to U.S. military supplies. Eisenhower was not prepared to take chances American security or brownie in an area where the Us had long been the dominant power. The CIA helped counterrevolutionaries drive Arbenz from power in June 1954. Guatemala appealed in vain to the Un, and assistants officials denied that the United States had annihilation to do with the change in government in Guatemala. The new President, Carlos Castillo Armas, reversed land reform and clamped down on the Communists, and he likewise restricted voting rights and curtailed civil liberties before an assassin murdered him in 1957.

Republic of guatemala was the base for another covert activeness that the Eisenhower administration planned simply did not carry out earlier leaving part. Eisenhower decided that Fidel Castro, who came to power in Republic of cuba in 1959, was a “madman” who had to be deposed. In 1960, the CIA began the training in Republic of guatemala of anti-Castro exiles who would invade Cuba. The CIA hoped for a success similar to the Guatemalan intervention of 1954. What they got instead, soon after John F. Kennedy became President, was the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in Apr 1961.

Middle East Rivalry

The intense rivalries in the Center East brought Eisenhower into a confrontation with his nigh of import allies, Uk and France. The origins of the Suez crisis of 1956 lay in the difficulties of the western powers in dealing with Gamal Abdel Nasser, the nationalist President of Egypt who followed an contained and provocative form in his dealings with major powers. Nasser bought weapons from Communist Czechoslovakia, and he sought economic aid from the Usa to build the Aswan High Dam on the Nile. The Eisenhower assistants was prepared to provide the assist, only during the negotiations, Nasser extended diplomatic recognition to the People’south Democracy of China. Already tired of the Egyptian leader’s playing off of “East confronting W by blackmailing both,” the Eisenhower administration halted the negotiations over aid. Nasser retaliated by nationalizing the Suez Culvert.

The British, French, and Israelis decided to accept military action. The British, especially, considered the canal a vital waterway, a lifeline to their colonies in Asia. Both the British and French disliked Nasser’due south inflammatory, anticolonial rhetoric. The Israelis, who faced constant border skirmishing because of Egypt’s refusal to recognize the right of their nation to exist, had powerful reasons to join the conspiracy. The three nations did not consult—or even inform—Eisenhower before the Israelis launched the first attacks into the Sinai Peninsula on October 29, 1956.

Eisenhower was outraged. He thought the attacks would just strengthen Nasser, allowing the Egyptian leader to become the champion of the Arab world equally he opposed the aggressors. Eisenhower chop-chop condemned the attacks and used U.S. diplomatic and economic power to forcefulness all three nations to withdraw their troops. The states prestige in the Middle E rose. But Eisenhower inappreciably made good apply of this advantage, as he announced a new program, known as the Eisenhower Doctrine, to provide economic and military machine aid to Heart Eastern nations facing Communist aggression. Yet information technology was nationalism, not Communism, that was past far the ascendant forcefulness in the region.

Difficulties with Nasser also influenced Eisenhower’southward decision two years subsequently to send Marines to Lebanon. For months, an internal political struggle had made Lebanon unstable. Then in July 1958, what appeared to be pro-Nasser forces seized power in Republic of iraq. To protect Lebanon from a similar threat—one more imagined than real—Eisenhower sent in the Marines. The troops stayed only three months and suffered merely one fatality. U.S. diplomats probably fabricated a more of import contribution by participating in negotiations that allowed the Lebanese factions to solve their political conflicts.

Intervention in Indochina

In Southeast Asia, Eisenhower sent U.S. weapons and dollars instead of troops. Like Truman, Eisenhower provided military assist to the French, who had begun fighting a war in 1946 to regain control over their colonial possession of Indochina, which included the current nations of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. By 1954, the Eisenhower administration was paying more than 75 pct of the French costs of the war. All the same the French were unable to defeat the Vietminh, a nationalist force nether the leadership of the Communist Ho Chi Minh.

A crunch occurred in early on 1954, when Vietminh forces surrounded a French garrison at the remote location of Dienbienphu. The French asked for more than weapons: they talked about a U.Due south. air strike, even with tactical nuclear weapons, to salvage their troops. Eisenhower considered the possibility of military action; indeed, he seemed prepared to qualify information technology under the correct circumstances. Congressional leaders, however, would not provide their support unless any U.S. military machine action was function of a multilateral try. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, notwithstanding, could non persuade the British or whatever other major marry to take part in what he called United Action in Indochina. The President decided against an air strike, and the French garrison surrendered after weeks of cruel siege. At an international conference in Geneva, the French government granted independence to Vietnam, Laos, and Kingdom of cambodia.

Eisenhower hoped to salvage a partial victory by preventing Ho Chi Minh from establishing a Communist authorities over all of Vietnam. In 1954-1955, U.S. aid and back up helped Ngo Dinh Diem establish a non-Communist government in what became S Vietnam. Eisenhower considered the cosmos of South Vietnam a significant Cold State of war success, yet his decision to commit U.S. prestige and ability in Southward Vietnam created long-term dangers that his successors would have to confront.

A Memorable Bye

In his Cheerio Accost, Eisenhower concentrated not on the threats he had confronted away but on the dangers of the Cold War at home. He told his fellow citizens to be wary of the “military-industrial complex,” which he described as the powerful combination of “an immense military machine establishment and a large arms industry.” Defense was a means to an finish, and the American people had to be conscientious that they did not allow special interests to blot an always-increasing share of national wealth or to “endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”

Eisenhower at times had difficulty balancing means and ends in protecting national security. He authorized covert interventions into the internal diplomacy of other nations and provided aid to dictators in the interest of protecting “the free world.” He spent half or more of the federal upkeep on the armed services, even as he proclaimed that “every gun that is fabricated, every warship launched, every rocket fired” was “a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.” Yet Eisenhower knew that real security meant preserving key values. His Cheerio Address summarized principles that had guided a lifetime of service to his country.

Audio of Eisenhower’southward Goodbye Address of 1961, in which he famously warned well-nigh the dangers of the “military industrial complex”.