Eisenhower

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by Louis Galambos


  He nevertheless left Europe to take over his new responsibilities as General Marshall’s replacement as the army’s Chief of Staff, still hoping that the United States and the Soviet Union would find a way to maintain peaceful relations. He was nervous about “our complete ignorance of what is going on in Russia and [Soviet-]occupied Germany.”4 But after Stalin backed down and removed his troops from Czechoslovakia, Eisenhower left Europe believing that, as Chief of Staff, he would be the leader of what would continue to be a peacetime US Army.

  Chief of Staff

  There was little that he needed to learn about his duties as Chief of Staff of the United States Army. But he did have to shift from being Supreme Commander of an Allied force with a single overriding goal to being top commander of a single service with many goals. That office made him the army’s strategist, administrator, advocate, and head lobbyist. But Eisenhower was not interested in those last two jobs. He never became a single-minded advocate for his service. His experience in Europe and the example of General Marshall helped him keep the national interest at the top of his list of priorities now that he was one among equals on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His responsibilities were broad, but his years with General MacArthur had left him with a long list of specific things the army’s leader should do and not do. He knew, for instance, that he had to keep the army out of the kind of embarrassing conflict he had experienced when the Bonus Army marched into Washington, DC, in the 1930s.

  There was potential for embarrassment as the Bring Back Daddy organization pressed a highly vocal campaign to get as many American soldiers as possible out of uniform and at home. Eisenhower reminded the public that the army still had worldwide responsibilities. In spite of his gentle message, the furor continued for a time before the discharges undercut the cause. Through the entire media episode, Ike managed to keep his public reputation intact. He had learned in Europe that at times it is what you do not say that works to your political advantage. His repeated efforts to muzzle his explosive friend Patton and his dealings with the British press had stamped home a lesson that helped ease him through the demobilization controversies.

  There were now much bigger issues on his plate: atomic weapons, rockets, and the potential threat posed by an aggressive Soviet empire. He was still trying to maintain friendly relations with Marshal Zhukov. But the pressure of Soviet expansion could not be ignored. As early as January 1946, war plans were under discussion.5 The Soviets were aggressively pressuring German scientists and engineers to move to the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany.6 There were problems in a divided Korea.7 And there was at least one war scare in the United States, in March 1946. But Ike tossed cold water on FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s panic about the news that the USSR’s ships were all suddenly clearing American harbors.8 Eisenhower demanded firm evidence of a Soviet military buildup behind the lines in Europe. Of course the evidence did not exist, and the issue disappeared. Nevertheless, by this time his goodwill toward the “Russians” was giving way to concerns about what the “Reds” were going to do next.9

  Eisenhower was not a belligerent Cold War warrior. He had seen too many young men die in combat already. But he now clearly understood that the USSR had long-term goals that were a threat to America, its democratic system, and its most important allies. Limited by the reduced manpower of the army, Eisenhower was nevertheless still thinking in terms of a traditional war along the lines of World War II.10 He was optimistic about the capability of the US forces currently in Europe, but he thought the government should be preparing the American people to understand the tense situation the Soviet Union was creating.11 Firmly convinced that America’s “self-interests can be served only by a long period of peace,” Eisenhower was determined to find means short of war for handling the Soviet pressure.12

  Essential to the peace, he thought, was the unity of the Anglo-American alliance. He had struggled to preserve a united front through four years of war and endless bickering on both sides. Unity would be no less important, he reasoned, in the years ahead and in particular in the resistance to Soviet aggression. In September and October 1946 he revisited Europe in part to energize the alliance that had survived the end of the war and a British Labour government that was less suspicious of Stalin’s plans than Churchill had been.13

  Gradually Eisenhower developed a long-term Cold War strategy. He decided that atomic weapons would certainly be used to resist a Soviet attack.14 He was relatively quick to respond to technological changes that had important military implications: born in an age of horses and buggies, he had learned to respect and understand the new technologies that were rapidly changing America and the rest of the developed world. If nations were so foolish as to allow a third world war to take place, he realized, it would not feature the trench warfare of World War I or the mass tank attacks of World War II. In the new age of rockets and atomic (and then nuclear) weapons, military tactics and strategy had to change. Above all, he wanted to avoid situations that might lead to that dreadful outcome. He was convinced, for instance, that a radical approach to US national security might well provoke the Soviets to fear America’s “offensive intent.”

  Overestimating the enemy, he said, “may reduce our own capability of developing that economic strength of the US and other free nations which might constitute the more effective deterrent to Soviet and Communist expansion.” He sought “emphasis on strengthening the economic and social dikes against Soviet communism rather than upon preparing for a possibly eventual, but not yet inevitable, war.”15 In the wake of the 1947 Truman Doctrine, which extended US aid to Greece and Turkey, Eisenhower became more negative about Soviet intentions. Still, he was restrained: “Although we must never lose sight of the constant threat implicit in Soviet political, economic and military aggression, we must remember also that Russia has a healthy respect for the power this nation can generate.”16

  That power, he reasoned, would be multiplied by unity. Through his stint as Chief of Staff, he tried never to press for policies or programs that favored the army over the other two services. Months of hard struggle over strategy, missions, and resources did not break his determination to stick to his version of an ideal national security plan for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His political gyroscope continued to be oriented to the national interest, not the parochial interests of the army. He was dismayed by the fact that interservice rivalry blocked his efforts to achieve the unity he had worked to create in Europe during the war.17 The battles of the budget, however, brought out the worst sort of rivalry between the services. He ended his three years as Chief of Staff lamenting that the Joint Chiefs had become “little more than an agency for eliminating from proposals and projects inconsequential and minor differences—a body of ‘fly speckers.’ ”18

  What he had finished was a thoroughgoing lesson in interest-group politics.19 It was a bitter lesson for Ike. He still found it difficult to accept the fact that interest groups—including the services—never stopped their efforts to reshape public policy to favor their immediate objectives. Once a decision was reached, Ike thought, all parties should join hands and move forward. But that was not the way interest groups played the game of politics. This central aspect of America’s twentieth-century democracy aroused his temper. He continued to brood about it after he set forth on a new venture as the president of a great American university.

  Source: The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower: The Chief of Staff IX, p. 2297. Map by James E. Gillispie, Curator of Maps at Johns Hopkins University.

  A University Interlude

  Eisenhower had begun his service in North Africa in the shadow of Chief of Staff George C. Marshall. He had finally escaped that comparison on D-Day. He would begin his tenure as president of Columbia University in the shadow of Nicholas Murray Butler, who had been president of the school from 1902 until 1945. Butler, a marvelously energetic former philosophy professor, had been deeply engaged with the disciplines, the departments, and the ordinary affairs of Columbia. He found time as
well to write, dabble in Republican politics, and win a Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership of the US peace movement.

  While Ike’s international reputation certainly matched that of his predecessor, Eisenhower had little interest in the intellectual content of the various disciplines and no interest whatsoever in their political squabbles. Working with Thomas Watson of IBM and the rest of the Board of Trustees, Ike made some attempts to strengthen the school’s endowment.20 But he was not a talented or dedicated fund-raiser, and most of the funds he brought in were to support the special programs he favored. He started this new job with an inappropriate vision of academic life and an ill-chosen team. He was too conservative for a faculty that primarily resonated to liberal ideologies and for a city with a long history of intellectual leadership on the left side of American political discourse. Ike was not just a fish out of water. He was a fish that was going to be fried in the political debates and gossip that raged around the university at Morningside Heights. Nothing in Eisenhower’s experiences had prepared him for the leadership of this institution at this time.21

  He did not, however, lack determination. Nor was he inflexible. He tried for months to provide Columbia University with the kind of leadership that had served him and the Allies well in Europe and Washington. He was most effective in dealing with the university’s Board of Trustees. They trusted him, liked him, and helped him solve some of the school’s worst economic problems. He was also able to muster support for two of his pet undertakings: the Conservation of Human Resources Project, which stemmed from his concern with America’s problems in providing manpower during the war,22 and the American Assembly, which was supposed to give the nation a new brand of intellectual discussion and orientation.23 Civil debate, Eisenhower reasoned, would help Columbia and the United States avoid the types of intense conflicts that were tearing apart many of the postcolonial nations.

  What Ike’s brand of leadership could not provide to the university, however, was a set of common goals that would appeal to and draw together the faculty and students. The disciplines, each of which had its own goals, methodologies, cultures, and leaders, worked against unity of the sort that Ike sought. They were in most regards just like the interest groups that provoked his ire in Washington. For many faculty members it was dangerous to even think about intellectual consensus and a common purpose. If you were dedicated to transforming America’s brand of democratic capitalism into an entirely different system—as some faculty members were—the Eisenhower brand of compromise and conciliation was simply a surrender to the already powerful individuals and organizations that had long been the ruin of America.

  Ike was in a trap. His situation got worse rather than better as he heeded once again the call to national duty. The disunity that had dismayed him as Chief of Staff had grown worse, and the secretary of defense, James Forrestal, asked President Truman to appoint Eisenhower as informal chairman of the Joint Chiefs in an effort to achieve a workable truce over the budget. “The talents of Ike,” Forrestal wrote, “in terms of the identification of problems and the accommodation of differing views, would be highly useful.… Specifically, what I had in mind was inviting him to come down, only with your approval, of course, to sit with us for a period of three or four weeks. I should like, if it were possible, to have him named by you for that interim period, and to preside over the Joint Chiefs, but if that were impossible an informal basis would be second best.”24

  Shocked by the Soviet blockade of Berlin a few months earlier, Eisenhower had already committed himself: “I believe that the time has come when everyone must begin to think in terms of his possible future duty and be as fully prepared for its performance as possible.”25 Although he was still president of Columbia University, his trips to Washington began at once. As Ike quickly discovered, however, neither he nor the secretary of defense—nor, for that matter, President Truman—had the authority to force the services to cooperate, to agree on strategy, or even to line up behind a single budget. “All have found it easy to run to congress & public with personal ideas & convictions,” he recorded in his diary. “We will not have unification until the Sec. of Def. is made very powerful—power to appoint & fire, among other things!”26 Persuasion failed. The threat of a national “disaster” did not faze the leaders of the services. This was the type of classic interest-group struggle that could and frequently did lock down American government and foster justified criticism of democracy.

  Eisenhower retained his faith in the American version of democracy, but his struggles in Washington during these years left him bitterly opposed to certain basic features of twentieth-century American politics. He was bitter enough to be willing to return to active service if it was necessary to untangle and reorient the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was not naive in that regard. But he wanted very badly to give the country a government that stressed the national interest and that placed specific, overriding constraints on the military services. He thought in 1948 and 1949 that the United States was unnecessarily endangering its national security in the Cold War because it lacked a strong commitment to compromise and cooperation at all levels of government. He emerged from his brief career as informal head of the Joint Chiefs with some new ideas about America’s defense and about the lobbying groups—service and otherwise—that swarmed Washington.27

  He continued to fume about the situation in Washington, while quietly building up the team of businessmen who would support his political career—when and if the opportunity arose. He was now sufficiently Machiavellian to push that project forward while vigorously denying any political ambitions. The telling evidence was his repeated refusal to remove himself once and for all from the field of contenders for the presidency of the United States. He did not want to be sandbagged again. He did not want to become a politician. But he wanted to be president.28 So he worked with a network of Republican friends and political advisors who were just as calculating as he was about the odds that he would someday be living in the White House. Accustomed as some of his close friends were to betting large sums on the turn of a card, they were not men to waste their time on obvious losers. They saw a bright future for Eisenhower, a future beyond military service and well beyond Columbia University. They turned out to be just as shrewd about politics as they were about business.

  Before that bright Republican future could unfold, however, Ike was pulled away to answer yet another call to military duty in Europe and Washington during a severe Cold War crisis. In June 1950, communist North Korea had attacked America’s ally, South Korea, and President Truman and the United Nations responded quickly and forcefully. US air, sea, and ground forces joined the battle. In western Europe, increasing tension between the USSR and the West had prompted the creation of a new alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). While the United States joined the alliance, the American people were seriously divided—as was Congress—about this new entanglement in European affairs. Two world wars had left many Americans wary of involvement and, like most Europeans, weary of war.29 It would be no simple job to weld together an American and European force that could realistically stand against the powerful land forces and airpower of the Soviet Union. President Truman sent Eisenhower to guide damage control on the all-important European front.

  NATO

  As Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), for NATO, Eisenhower took on a task that played to his great strengths as a leader. His abiding vision of unity and his conciliatory approach to authority meshed perfectly with NATO’s goals. The reputation he had earned in the defeat of European fascism made him the ideal spokesman for the new alliance. Unlike his appointment at Columbia University, he took on this new job with a clear vision of what should be accomplished and how, exactly, it could be done. Everything in his career had prepared him to build a NATO force, develop a realistic strategy, and persuade his commanders and their men and women to devote their energies to the common cause. He was a unifier, and NATO badly needed unity.

  Lost lives in Wo
rld War II, lost money, and lost determination all deeply undercut the effort to unify and rearm the West. One essential part of Eisenhower’s task was to encourage the NATO nations to provide the forces and equipment that would be needed if they were to create a realistic defense force. “This whole problem,” he wrote, “dissolves itself into one of morale, and there is going to be a lot of skillful and energetic work take place before there will begin to develop a morale that will be effective in these troublesome times.”30 He launched that effort with a quick tour of eleven nations in January 1951.31 Everything that he had learned about leadership between the North African landings and the German surrender quickly came into play. He was optimistic in the face of massive pessimism. He was well organized and precise in confronting disorganization and fear. He inspired cooperation at a time when each of the new allies was still struggling with its own particular postwar economic and political problems. It was Eisenhower at his best.

  After returning to the United States and reporting on his trip, Eisenhower and Mamie settled in France for this next tour of duty. NATO headquarters were in Paris, and while there Eisenhower began slowly and sometimes awkwardly to build a core team around his close friend and chief of staff, General Alfred Maximilian Gruenther. He and Gruenther were the puzzle masters as they pulled together a staff that could both salve national feelings and get the job done.32 They had to put up with a good bit of what Ike called “balderdash.”33 His forceful rhetoric was (as it had been in Normandy) applied to situations characterized more by stasis than strength: they had to clear away the “underbrush,” he said, and get along with the “real business of chopping wood.”34

 

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