In the course of formulating the communist regime’s policies toward Taiwan and the rest of its neighbors, Mao launched an attack on two small islands, Quemoy and Matsu, within artillery range of the mainland.37 The Nationalists dug in. They vowed to defend the islands as the first part of a defense of Taiwan, and Eisenhower supported them despite the disapproval of his European allies.38 After another show of US atomic force, this test of the Solarium policy dribbled to a conclusion in 1961. It left the Nationalists still in Quemoy and Matsu, Mao still searching for the economic strength that would sustain a more aggressive foreign policy, and the allies focused on events in Europe that were much more threatening to America and world peace than anything happening in the Far East.
Europe, NATO, and the Soviet Challenge
Campaign rhetoric seems often to inspire Americans, even though they understand that the promises will seldom be honored once their candidate is in office. Campaign biographies add to the myth, as do the accounts produced by journalists who are swayed to favor one candidate or another. The result is a march toward office with supporters carrying banners that will be dropped quickly as the realities of public office intrude upon the successful candidate. Eisenhower was no exception. There are few exceptions to this rule in American history.
The biggest single campaign promise that came back to haunt President Eisenhower was the Republican national platform in 1952, which echoed Dulles’s earlier call for liberation of the peoples of eastern Europe from communist control. This promise—to seek “the genuine independence of those captive peoples”—defied the kind of common sense that characterized Ike’s approach to national security. Eisenhower had a good understanding of what the Soviets had accomplished on the Eastern Front in World War II. They had crushed the bulk of the German army and made it possible for the Allies to succeed at D-Day and in the following campaigns in France and Germany. He had a good understanding as well of the Soviet dedication to an expansion of communism and to control of the communist regimes in eastern Europe. Having been invaded from the west by Germany and long before that by France, the Soviets were not about to roll back to Russia without a fight. It was a fight that Eisenhower could not expect to win. He understood the strengths and weaknesses of NATO all too well.
Why, then, did he run on a platform promising “liberating influences” that would mark “the beginning of the end” for the communist rulers of eastern Europe? That is not too hard to explain. He wanted very badly to be president of the United States. Otherwise, he would not have kowtowed to Senator McCarthy and failed to defend his great friend General Marshall.39 But that leaves you to ponder why he would allow even a hint of the “rollback” concept into the Solarium strategy. In this case, the only appealing explanation is that he wanted the strategy to inspire as well as guide, and whereas “containment” was an essentially static concept, “rollback” was dynamic and seemed to point toward victory rather than the status quo.
But rollback was a fatuous public relations concept, and its hollowness was revealed with clarity in 1956 when the Hungarian revolt began. The Soviets had practiced for this crisis as early as 1953, when an East German uprising had taken place. They had quickly crushed that movement, and they responded with even greater force to the Hungarian revolution. Stalin had died in 1953, but Stalinism lived on in eastern Europe. The Allies were divided by the abortive Suez invasion that had left the United States and the Soviet Union temporarily on the same side. Without starting World War III, there was virtually nothing Eisenhower could do about Hungary except fume, criticize the Soviets, and go to the UN for a hollow statement of condemnation.40
The Soviets had sent 4,000 tanks and thousands of troops into Budapest, dwarfing the forces that NATO had at that time. The situation was horribly reminiscent of the battle of Kursk and other World War II campaigns on the Eastern Front. The balance of power in Europe was still decisively weighted toward the USSR—unless, of course, you added US thermonuclear power to the formula. Eisenhower was unwilling even to consider a nuclear response, howsoever vaguely stated. He did everything possible during his eight years in office to build up NATO’s military power. Even during the worst disagreements with his NATO allies, he never left any doubt that the linchpin of the New Look strategy was still the defense of western Europe. It was the one part of America’s sprawling empire that clearly would justify a nuclear response to a Soviet invasion. But Eisenhower was determined to ensure that would not be in 1956. He mustered rhetoric against the Soviets on Hungary and blasted his allies into submission over Suez.
There was, however, one part of western Europe that was vulnerable to Soviet pressure, and that, of course, is where Khrushchev pressed forward to explore the level of Eisenhower’s determination. The Soviet leader issued what appeared to be an ultimatum: the United States, Britain, and France had to give formal recognition to the communist East German government and pull their troops out of Berlin. The Soviet note specified what would happen and when it would happen if the NATO allies refused to budge. The controversy, which had been going on since late 1958, seemed now to have reached a dangerous junction. On May 27, 1959, Khrushchev said, the USSR would turn over control of access to Berlin to its East German satellite. That would force the Allies either to deal directly with the East German regime or move out of a city they could no longer supply.41
Eisenhower and his advisors took this threat seriously. The president was worried “about unexpected developments either through miscalculation or muddling.”42 He nevertheless rejected the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and decided to make three interrelated moves on the US/USSR chessboard. First he set in motion a highly visible if routine replacement of US troops in Berlin. Simultaneously, he moved tactical nuclear weapons to Europe. Finally, he accepted the British suggestion that he press for further discussions by the foreign ministers of the four engaged powers: the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and Britain.
The discussions drizzled toward no conclusion, as did Khrushchev’s determination to force the issue. The Soviet ultimatum simply floated away after Eisenhower issued a somewhat softer ultimatum of his own: in 1959, he refused to discuss other issues with Khrushchev unless the Soviets removed “any appearance of a threat or time limit to the settlement” over Berlin.43 This left the Allies in Berlin and the city still a vulnerable outpost inside the Iron Curtain. But the basic Eisenhower strategy appeared to be working. Time, he was certain, was still on his side.
Meanwhile, Eisenhower had worked hard to counter the threat of a nuclear surprise attack. With Ike, the memory of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 was very much alive. He had served for years in the Philippines, where the threat from Japan was always under consideration. He was thus unusually aware throughout his eight years as president of the danger of a surprise attack from the USSR. He supported the efforts to develop reconnaissance aircraft, the most famous of which was the U-2, which flew so high that it could not at that time be downed by Soviet antiaircraft fire or fighter planes—even though the overflights of Soviet territory were clearly a violation of international law and common practice.44 The aircraft were only a temporary answer, so he also signed off on the funding of the rockets and space satellites that could observe Soviet preparations for war on a permanent basis.45
The attack never came, and Ike and America could by 1961 celebrate eight years of peace as well as prosperity. It was a wary peace. In 1961, Ike’s efforts to prevent a surprise attack would morph into a National Reconnaissance Office responsible on an ongoing basis for ensuring that future administrations would not suffer that kind of attack. By that time, however, it was evident that the Solarium strategy had worked. It would continue to work for the next thirty years, when the collapse of the Soviet Union at last removed from America and its allies the threat of mutual nuclear destruction. The peace would continue to be tenuous, dangerous, and more unpredictable than any American would like. But it did last.
The Mixed Bag of Mastery
T
hrough his entire presidency, Eisenhower had the impression that he was constantly putting out forest fires in the middle of a windstorm. There seemed never to be the time or resources to put out any of the fires completely—or at least to his satisfaction. Neither America’s allies nor its enemies were entirely predictable or, for that matter, entirely rational. Above all, they frequently appeared to be willing to take a chance on creating a nuclear Armageddon to gain some relatively minor advantage. The Soviets in the Berlin crisis. The British, French, and Israelis in the Suez crisis. The Chinese, who bombarded two small islands between the mainland and Taiwan. It was enough to make a mature leader ill, and indeed, Ike’s stress-related health problems flared up again and again.
His own relatively rational brand of leadership was on full display for eight years: move carefully rather than quickly; keep the long view up front as much as possible; nurture the elements of your national strength; squeeze out the emotion of the moment and explore the facts; prioritize your problems and your resources; stress unity in a common cause; and always give your opponents a way out with their honor intact.
Often this formula did not work very well in dealing with revolutionary movements; given the temper of the postwar world, that was Ike’s major shortcoming. While he sought stability in a peaceful world, socialist-nationalist revolutionaries sought radical change in a world that was unlikely to be peaceful until they had achieved their objectives.
To his credit, however, Eisenhower’s style of leadership worked very well in great-power relations and in the vital business of governing the United States. He had the advantage of understanding what the bulk of the American people would tolerate, and he respected their opinions even when he disagreed with them. He continued to respect their views when Cold War exigencies seemed to call for actions that were certain to be unpopular in the short run. He recognized that complete transparency in government was both impossible to achieve and undesirable, but he attempted to provide the legislature and the nation’s citizens with as much information about foreign policy and national security as could safely be revealed.46 He had in his long career absorbed enough of the Machiavellian outlook to realize that he could not always be open and would need from time to time to support covert operations.
He could not, of course, tell Americans about the U-2 surveillance flights over the Soviet Union. They provided vital information to a president still nervous near the end of his term about a Soviet surprise attack on the United States. In addition to yielding information, the flights had no doubt inspired caution in Moscow by repeatedly demonstrating to the Soviet leadership how far behind they were in military technology. Thus, Eisenhower authorized the flight by Gary Powers that the Soviets were able to shoot down, much to the embarrassment of the president at the four-power summit with Khrushchev. At first Ike lied about the situation like a little boy in Abilene caught reading some books that he was not supposed to have.47 That seldom works for little boys, and it did not work for Ike. The summit collapsed, and the president was forced to acknowledge that he had lied and to pledge that the United States would no longer conduct overflights of the USSR. This was clearly a short-term loss for Eisenhower, both in prestige and in international relations. The U-2 incident crushed his hopes and those of America’s allies for the summit and weakened the unity Ike had spent eight years building.
Viewed in the long term, the U-2—even its last, provocative flight—was typical of Eisenhower’s handling of Cold War relations. The repeated flights that had not been intercepted were an accurate measure of the military gap between the United States and the Soviet Union. This gap was as evident to Khrushchev as it was to Eisenhower and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By 1960, Eisenhower could well afford to end the flights because he held a hidden ace in the US satellite program. The Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 had accelerated American efforts to develop the intercontinental missiles that would bolster the threat essential to the New Look and, not incidentally, provide the lift needed for effective observational satellites. The intelligence results began to come in as early as August 1960. The satellites gave Eisenhower the vital information that he needed about Soviet military development and potential to launch the surprise attack that Ike had been focused on since 1953 and that Americans had feared since 1957.
As his second administration ended, there were long-term problems left to fester in Latin America and in Iran. Nor had Ike discovered the magic formula for creating a stable peace in the Middle East. But he had given the United States eight years of the most effective leadership in foreign relations that the country had received—or would receive—in the twentieth century. His legacy in January 1961 included a national security strategy that would in a matter of decades bring the Cold War to an astonishing and peaceful conclusion.
Saying Goodbye
Dwight David Eisenhower had served his country with honor since 1915 and had learned along that frequently contentious way how to lead a platoon, a division, an army, an allied force, a nation, and a complex international alliance. His identity and his reputation as a statesman were well established throughout the world. Three days before he left office, he gave a farewell address that summed up some of the lessons he had learned. Cooperation, democracy, sacrifice, balance, the long view, equality, trust, diligence, and devotion to principle would, he said, continue to carry the nation toward its “great goals” of prosperity and “peace with justice.” Echoing the New Look, he reminded Americans that there would be constant threats: “Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.”
But then, in one of the most memorable phrases in any of his speeches, he pointed to the danger posed to democracy by “the military-industrial complex.” He had struggled to harness that complex for eight years in the White House. Before that, as Chief of Staff and as informal chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he had wrestled with armed services that behaved like civilian interest groups and industrial interest groups that were never willing to subordinate short-term self-interest to the national interest. There was as well a “scientific-technological elite” that buttressed the military-industrial complex and threatened to warp the country’s universities and public policies.
Still an optimist despite these problems and his experiences with war and partisan politics, Eisenhower expressed his hope that the nation would overcome its challenges at home and abroad and would achieve success in its “adventure in free government.” He proudly benchmarked 1961, declaring: “America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world.” If America used its power “in the interests of world peace and human betterment,” the United States would, he hoped, be able “to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations.”
He spoke with all of the authority of the premier leader of the free world. He held that position because he had responded creatively to the many changes that had taken place in America and the world in his lifetime. That was the central challenge the boy from Abilene had faced, and it was the challenge the American people and their leaders would face in the years that followed 1961.
Twelve
Ike and Mamie in retirement at the Gettysburg farm in 1966.
The Wise Man
Dwight David Eisenhower helped lead the United States and its allies through their two most threatening confrontations of the twentieth century. One was the war against Nazi fascism. The other was the struggle against the Soviet brand of aggressive, authoritarian communism. In the course of those epic encounters the boy from small-town Kansas had become the preeminent leader of the free world and the spokesman for the middle way, a moderate style of conservatism, in the democracies. A master of consensus building and unity, he managed to reduce conflict at home and to prevent the war he most feared. While he did not achieve all of his personal goals as president, he was justified in being proud of t
he prosperity and peace Americans had experienced in the 1950s. He had certainly earned his long-awaited retirement from public service.
When Eisenhower left office in 1961, he and Mamie retreated to their farm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and contemplated a new life. No longer in office, no longer in power in the federal government, the Republican Party, the US Army, NATO, or the United Nations, Ike thought he might from time to time provide wise counsel to those who now exercised authority. He looked forward to being out from under the hammer of decisions. He had had enough of that, and his long string of serious health problems attested to his relentless attention to duty. But in the course of his military and political careers he had accumulated an immense knowledge of the people, the institutions, and the issues the world faced in the 1960s, and now he had every reason to believe that his advice would be useful to those who wielded power at home and abroad. He would be the wise man of American policy.1
This was the seventh and the last major shift in his evolving identities, rounding out the transitions that had shaped his capacity for leadership, his selection as a leader, and the type of leader he became. His ability to adjust throughout his career to a changing environment, responsibilities, and associations distinguished him from most of his peers. His shifting identities provide an important part of the answer to the question at the heart of this book: how did a small-town boy from Kansas become the leader of the free world? The boy from Kansas was smart and knew how to work hard. But he displayed little aptitude for leadership and little interest in worldly issues beyond sports, friends, girlfriends, and family—the common stuff of boyhood in Middle America in the early twentieth century, and today as well. His family life decisively shaped his orientation to authority. His father and older brother left him with a streak of anti-authoritarianism that blended with his congenital tendency to have a short fuse. His mother encouraged him to control his temper, to learn to accommodate to authority, and to get ahead in life through education, self-discipline, and hard work. Well liked by his peers, the boy left Abilene with a mind-set that was a jumble of conflicting values and perspectives on life. His orientation toward authority had the potential to impose a sharp upper bound on his performance at West Point and his subsequent military career.
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