American Empire

by Joshua Freeman

  Ike’s Cold War

  The death of Stalin and the end of the Korean War had neither halted the Cold War nor diminished the American effort to best the Soviet Union, militarily and diplomatically. Eisenhower cut defense spending, but he did so by shifting resources and national security strategy toward nuclear weapons and systems to deliver them, including long-range bombers, short- and long-range missiles, and virtually unstoppable missile-equipped Polaris submarines, which began going into operation just as he left office. Rhetorically, his administration upped the ante from the Truman administration, calling for not just the containment of communism within its existing boundaries but also its “rollback,” to free what the president termed the “enslaved nations” of the Soviet bloc.

  The Truman and Eisenhower administrations took some modest actions aimed at prying nations out of the Soviet sphere. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the CIA infiltrated agents into Eastern Europe who were supposed to stir up anti-Soviet sentiment and lay the basis for popular uprisings. In most cases, they were immediately rounded up and executed. Under Truman, the spy agency also set up Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty to foment discontent within the Soviet bloc. Unrestrained by the checks and balances of open government, the CIA sometimes drifted toward the bizarre. In addition to its broadcasts, Radio Free Europe sent propaganda leaflets into Eastern Europe by attaching them to balloons. By 1956, it was dropping leaflets over the region at a rate of fourteen million a month.

  The CIA efforts indicated that some elements of the government believed in the rhetoric portraying the Soviet bloc as a mass of anticommunist discontent and the possibility of rollback. Reality, however, had a habit of asserting itself, as more sober American leaders understood that trying to pry pieces away from domination by a Soviet Union armed with nuclear weapons risked world war and mutual annihilation. When in 1953 worker protests rocked East Germany, and when three years later a broad revolt against Soviet control broke out in Hungary, the United States encouraged the rebels in radio broadcasts but did nothing to provide them with concrete aid.

  Though the United States tacitly accepted the status quo in Europe, its policy, under Eisenhower, of threatening to use nuclear weapons to achieve policy goals (“brinksmanship”) kept tensions with the Soviet Union high. So did the bluster of Nikita Khrushchev, who emerged as the dominant figure in the post-Stalin Soviet leadership. Khrushchev used exaggerated claims of nuclear prowess to try to force the Western powers into agreements that would guarantee the USSR security and its hegemony within its sphere even as it reduced the size of its military. On October 7, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I (“traveling companion”), into earth orbit, an impressive scientific and engineering achievement that set off a near panic in the United States. Unlike the United States, the Soviet Union had not developed a large fleet of long-distance bombers, limiting the threat to North America from its atomic arsenal. Sputnik seemingly changed that, as Khrushchev claimed that its launching proved that the Soviet Union had missiles capable of delivering weapons anywhere on earth.

  Coming at a time when Soviet diplomatic influence was growing and its rate of economic growth exceeded that in the United States, the launching of Sputnik led many Americans to the disconcerting idea that perhaps their country was beginning to fall behind its foremost adversary. The spectacular failure of the first American effort to send a satellite into orbit, two months after Sputnik—the launch rocket rose just four feet before falling back in flames—did nothing to boost national confidence. Nor did subsequent developments in what turned into a “space race” between the United States and the Soviet Union. When the Army did get the first American satellite, Explorer I, aloft, in January 1958, it weighed only ten pounds. By then the Soviets had launched the 1,121-pound Sputnik II, which carried a dog named Laika into orbit, part of a string of space triumphs that included the first rocket to reach the moon, the first one to circle it and photograph its back side, and the first man into space. For many people in the United States, where it had become common to assume that it was the best in the world at everything, all this came as a rude shock.

  Eisenhower tried to resist post-Sputnik pressure from the press, the military, establishment foundations, the scientific community, and politicians to launch a crash space effort, increase defense spending, and create new federal programs to upgrade science and education. Eisenhower had accurate intelligence that in spite of its claims the Soviet Union did not have a single operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to North America. (It would not until the 1960s.) As Soviet leaders knew, but the American public did not, since 1956 the United States had been flying surveillance flights over the Soviet Union using the U-2 spy plane, a technological marvel that flew at such heights and at such speed that Soviet air defense units could not shoot it down. Reluctantly, Eisenhower made some concessions to those who saw the Soviet space firsts as indicative of a dangerous national complacency, ordering the deployment of medium-range missiles in Turkey and Italy, from where they could reach deep into the Soviet Union, and increasing spending on bombers and missiles. But he succeeded in blocking calls for a large-scale civil defense program and major increases in overall defense spending. A new, civilian agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), took over much of the space effort (though greater funding went to military space programs, which concentrated on developing spy satellites). Eisenhower also accepted the National Defense Education Act, which increased federal spending on education, especially for science and math. Conservative opposition to state expansion, at least when done in the name of national security, continued to wither.

  Khrushchev wanted to take advantage of his seeming (though not actual) position of strength to deescalate the arms race and force the United States into direct negotiations to settle a range of outstanding issues between the two blocs. He had become frustrated by the failure of the United States to respond to what he saw as multiple efforts by the Soviet Union to create a more peaceful relationship. The Soviet Union had withdrawn its troops from Finland and Austria, substantially reduced the size of its army, unilaterally halted its nuclear weapons testing in March 1958, and rejected the idea, held forth by previous Soviet leaders, that war between the communist and capitalist camps was inevitable. Khrushchev tried to use the status of Berlin as his lever. West Berlin had practical and symbolic importance for the communist bloc. The city had become an escape route for thousands of East Germans, who unfavorably compared life in their country to life in the western half of the old German capital, into which the United States and its allies had thrown great amounts of aid. The East German government pressured the Soviet Union to do something about the sore point in its midst. Meanwhile, Soviet leaders grew increasingly fearful about the rearming of West Germany and its military and economic integration with Western Europe. In November 1958 Khrushchev demanded that within six months the Western powers sign a peace treaty with Germany (none had ever been concluded after World War II) and withdraw their troops from West Berlin, making it a “free city,” or the Soviet Union would turn control over access to the city to East Germany (which would violate the Potsdam agreement signed by the Allied powers at the end of the war).

  Khrushchev’s threat failed to have the result he hoped for. The Western powers refused to negotiate over West Berlin and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said that NATO would use military force if East Germany tried to block access to the city. This tough stand forced the Soviet leader to allow his six-month deadline to come and go without action. But his Berlin move did make the United States more receptive to Soviet requests for high-level direct talks. In the summer of 1959, Vice President Richard Nixon visited the Soviet Union. In September, Khrushchev toured the United States and met at length with Eisenhower. The trip, which received enormous publicity in both countries, produced no major agreements except for a plan for a future summit c
onference of Britain, France, the United States, and the USSR.

  The summit proved abortive. Shortly before it was set to begin, Eisenhower approved a May 1, 1960, U-2 flight over the Soviet Union. This time, the Soviets succeeded in shooting down the plane. Khrushchev, perhaps having decided that the summit, which he had worked so hard to set up, would not achieve anything, ended it before it took up substantial business, saying that his country could not participate because of the U-2 incident. As Eisenhower’s term in office neared its end, relations with the Soviet Union seemed as fraught and intractable as they had been when the Korean War concluded.

  The Developing World

  Even as the nuclear stalemate tensely maintained the status quo in Europe, in the nonindustrialized world, movements for decolonization, democracy, and economic equality led to intense political struggles and armed conflict. Contests over the political and social direction of developing countries were often subsumed into the Cold War. Nixon later recalled that during the 1950s, “For better or worse, the colonial empires were disintegrating. The great question . . . was who would fill the vacuum. . . . If the United States did not move, the Chinese or the Soviets . . . certainly would.” Stalin had had little interest in the nonindustrialized world, but his successors saw in decolonization an opportunity to bolster Soviet power and pursue semi-submerged dreams of world revolution left over from their youth. Stalin had traveled outside of the Soviet Union only for meetings with wartime allies; Khrushchev, within a few years of taking power, visited China, Yugoslavia, India, Burma, and Indonesia. But the Cold War was not the whole story. While the United States used the language of Cold War competition to explain its policy in the developing world, it had aims and interests besides competition with the communist bloc.

  In the Middle East, oil, along with the desire for geostrategic influence, shaped American policy. The first major move came in Iran. After pressuring the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops from northern Iran after World War II, the United States had deferred to Britain, the major colonial power in the region, whose government controlled Iran’s oil industry through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Venezuela and Saudi Arabia pressured foreign oil companies—predominantly American—into agreeing to fifty-fifty splits of profits. When Iranian nationalists demanded a similar arrangement with Anglo-Iranian, the cash-starved British government refused. Internal Iranian politics crosscut the oil dispute, as reformist prime minister Mohammad Mossaddegh, who led the anti-British effort, also tried to limit the power of the hereditary shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and later the parliament as well.

  American policymakers feared that a combination of British intransigence and internal politics would drive Iran toward the Soviet Union. After Mossaddegh nationalized the oil industry and Britain blockaded Iran’s oil exports, the United States refused to back a British plan to use its military to restore prior arrangements. Instead, Washington decided to help the shah to depose the prime minister. The CIA, working with British intelligence, plotted a coup and supplied equipment to the shah’s backers. After a first effort by the shah to oust the prime minister failed, leading him to flee the country, American agents mobilized crowds in Tehran opposing Mossaddegh and supporting Pahlavi. A mob attack on Mossaddegh’s home led to his arrest, allowing the shah to return, greatly strengthened by the American intervention. In negotiations that followed, the U.S. government took the lead in setting up a new consortium of oil companies, in which American firms had an equal stake with the British, which took over oil production in Iran, evenly splitting profits with the Iranians.

  Any doubt that the United States had displaced Britain as the dominant Western power in the Middle East was erased during the 1956 Suez crisis. The United States helped provoke the crisis through its wavering policy toward Gamal Abdel Nasser, the charismatic nationalist who had taken power in Egypt in 1954. Nasser helped lead the movement among developing nations for “nonalignment” with either Cold War camp, seeking arms and assistance from both. Initially, the Eisenhower administration agreed to help fund Nasser’s plan for a huge dam on the Nile River at Aswan. But opposition to the aid grew in the United States from hard-line anticommunists, disturbed by Egypt’s arms deal with Czechoslovakia and recognition of Communist China; supporters of Israel, which was engaged in skirmishing with Egypt and looking to expand its territory; cotton growers, not eager to help an international rival; and fiscal conservatives, worried about the cost of the project. Nasser responded to Dulles’s July 1956 announcement that the United States would not fund Aswan after all by nationalizing the French- and British-owned company that ran the Suez Canal, seeking to reassert his position in relation to the Western powers and get a source of income for the Nile dam.

  Eisenhower tried to work out a compromise arrangement for running the canal, but the British and French insisted on retaining control. Without informing the United States, they hatched a plot with Israel to capture the waterway. On October 28, Israel invaded Egypt. Using this as an excuse, the French and British sent in their own forces to seize the canal. Eisenhower, furious that France and Britain had moved behind his back in what he viewed as a ridiculously out-of-date effort at using force to reimpose colonial arrangements, decided to block them. A threat by the Soviet Union, which just had crushed the Hungarian uprising, to militarily support the Egyptians, added to his determination to resolve the crisis. The United States got the UN General Assembly to pass a resolution calling for a truce, mobilized its military forces to send a message to the Soviets to stay out, and pressured Britain and France to agree to a cease-fire just hours before they would have taken the canal. Eventually, the UN sent a peacekeeping mission to the region, Israel retreated, and the Egyptians retained control over the waterway.

  The resolution of the Suez crisis ended one set of problems for the United States in a region Eisenhower considered vital to the nation’s interests because of its oil, but exacerbated others. Nasser emerged from the crisis with enormous influence in the Arab world. The left-leaning Pan-Arabism he promoted gained strength throughout the region. Unreconciled to the United States, Egypt moved closer to the Soviet Union, which agreed to fund the Aswan Dam. To try to restrain Nasser, Eisenhower cultivated a conservative, pro-American alternative to the Egyptian leader in King Saud of Saudi Arabia. To convince the king that if necessary the United States would use force to protect its allies, in 1958 the president sent fourteen thousand Marines into Lebanon at the request of its pro-Western leader, who was beleaguered by opponents at home and worried about the overthrow of the pro-Western monarchy in neighboring Iraq. Khrushchev turned down Nasser’s plea for some response, a tacit acknowledgment of an American sphere of influence in the Middle East.

  Eisenhower preferred covert action, of the sort that proved successful in Iran, over direct military intervention. It cost less money and had less risk of leading to escalating warfare or lost prestige in the event of failure. American policymakers justified the antidemocratic character of secretly interfering in other nations’ affairs by the exigencies of the Cold War. A 1954 report on CIA covert operations by Lieutenant General James Doolittle, which Eisenhower commissioned, set out a moral and political rationale for the kinds of activities the agency already had been undertaking: “It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever cost. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the United States is to survive . . . [we] must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated and more effective methods than those used against us.”

  The United States did just that in Guatemala the same year as the Doolittle report, beginning an ongoing program of covert action in Latin America. A democratic wave that swept across Central and South America in the mid-1940s, forcing out one dictator after another, worried American policymakers. The regimes that came to power generally had a social democratic out
look and in some cases included communists. American interests threatened by land and labor reform, like the huge United Fruit Company, lobbied the government to push back the movement for more equitable economic and social arrangements that challenged the near-feudal power of large landholders and investors. In 1950, George Kennan told a group of American ambassadors to South American countries that the United States “should not hesitate before police repression by the local government. This is not shameful, since the communists are essentially traitors. . . . It is better to have a strong regime in power than a liberal government if it is indulgent and relaxed and penetrated by communists.”

  Effective American intervention depended on finding or creating local allies. In Guatemala, the landed oligarchy bitterly opposed Jacobo Arbenz, an army officer who had helped lead a 1944 revolution and had been elected president in 1950, but it lacked the social legitimacy or dynamism to rally a broad movement for his removal. When the Eisenhower administration decided to oust Arbenz, who had close ties to members of Guatemala’s small Communist Party, the CIA organized anticommunist students, Catholic activists, and dissident army officers to lead the effort. Undertaking a much longer, more comprehensive, and more sophisticated campaign than it used in Iran, the CIA isolated the Guatemalan government from its neighbors, tarred it in the press as communist (which it was not), disrupted the economy, and worked to spread confusion and disarray. When a CIA-equipped force of several hundred exiles based in Honduras invaded Guatemala, with CIA-supplied air cover and a massive propaganda effort that portrayed its victory as inevitable, the army deserted Arbenz, who resigned. In the months that followed, the police, army, and vigilante groups killed thousands of his supporters.