With the waning of British power in the Middle East, the Kremlin attempted to gain influence among Arab nationalists in Egypt and Syria. During the Suez crisis of 1956, Eisenhower placed U.S. forces around the world on full alert. The next year, he pledged military and economic assistance to defend any Middle Eastern nation threatened by the aggressiveness of international communism. Congress endorsed the Eisenhower Doctrine, which sanctioned the use of force in the oil-rich region. The Sixth Fleet along with Army and Marine units deployed briefly, but all sides backed away from the brink.
Linking civil rights to the Cold War, Eisenhower stood at the brink again on September 25, 1957. The commander-in-chief sent elements of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas. Armed with bayonets against a howling mob, 1,000 paratroopers protected nine African American students entering Central High School. Across the Third World, people of color took note of the freedom struggle within the U.S.
The Arms Race
In late 1957, the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite heightened American fears of a nuclear attack. With U.S. missile development ostensibly lagging, Congress responded by creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA. Moreover, the National Defense Education Act established federal grants for training in mathematics and science. Teaming with the Canadian government, the U.S. created the Distant Early Warning, or DEW, which provided a radar system across northern Canada and Alaska. Consequently, the Sputnik crisis spurred the Pentagon to seek increases in defense spending.
With the Pentagon worried that space-age technology threatened to make SAC wings obsolete, programs for surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles received additional funding. The Atlas, Vanguard, and Titan programs focused on the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs. Even though the press exaggerated the capabilities of the Soviet arsenal, America's missile programs appeared in disarray by comparison.
The Army, Navy, and Air Force maintained separate plans for nuclear attack, which prompted the Eisenhower administration to request a single integrated operational plan called SIOP-62. It outlined a preemptive nuclear attack if an early warning system detected an imminent strike by an adversary. Identifying over 1,000 targets in the Soviet Union, China, and Warsaw Pact nations, it anticipated the delivery of 3,200 nuclear devices by the American military. The mighty warheads potentially would kill hundreds of millions in the blink of an eye. When reviewing a top-secret draft in 1957, Eisenhower recalled that it “frightened the devil out of me.”
As the decade closed, Eisenhower agreed to a Paris summit with British and French leaders that included Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier. While touring the U.S., Khrushchev endorsed the notion of “peaceful coexistence.” In addition to advocating “Atoms for Peace” and “Open Skies,” Eisenhower offered to talk about a ban against atmospheric and water testing of nuclear arms. Suddenly, another rocket interrupted their summit plans. On May 1, 1960, the Soviets fired a missile to down a CIA U-2 spy plane and captured the pilot, Francis Gary Powers. Khrushchev denounced the violation of Soviet airspace and left the summit early, although the Kremlin later exchanged Powers for a captured communist spy. Embarrassed by the U-2 incident, Eisenhower admitted to authorizing high-altitude surveillance but refused to halt the CIA's intelligence-gathering activities.
In a farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower reflected upon the issues of peace, prosperity, and power. The former soldier noted that the Cold War “absorbs our very beings,” which compelled the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.” A combination of interests not only provided national security but also generated civilian jobs. Nevertheless, he urged Americans to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Unable to achieve disarmament, he retired from public service with “a definite sense of disappointment.”
During the presidential election cycle of 1960, Americans debated the perceived disparities in the respective armaments of the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Democrats nominated Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, who called for a concerted effort to close a “missile gap” with communist rivals. After winning the election, Kennedy learned from the CIA that the “missile gap” was nothing more than a fiction of the Cold War. With soaring rhetoric about “a long twilight struggle,” his inaugural address trumpeted the importance of national defense in the “hour of maximum danger.”
The Kennedy administration sought to depart from the all-or-nothing approach to the Cold War by underscoring a “flexible response.” As the Kremlin continued to support “wars of national liberation” around the globe, the Pentagon attempted to gear up for the full range of emerging threats. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara endorsed a nuclear “triad” that included SAC, ICBMs, and Polaris missiles, but he also created “Strike Command” to mesh the Army's mobile forces with the Air Force's tactical and airlift capabilities. However, a CIA operation at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba turned into a fiasco. The president refused to provide air support to anti-communist forces, which discredited the U.S. and emboldened the Soviets.
During 1961, Kennedy and Khrushchev met at the Vienna Conference. The Soviet premier informed the “youngster” that he would move on his own to resolve the Berlin impasse. He threatened to end American access to West Berlin, located nearly 100 miles within East Germany. By August, the Soviets began erecting the Berlin Wall to prevent refugees from escaping to freedom. Kennedy activated several National Guard and Reserve units and ordered more than 40,000 additional troops to Europe. U.S. armored divisions prepared to defend the Fulda Gap. The Berlin crisis intensified, but Khrushchev decided against war at the time.
Once the Berlin crisis abated, the Soviets moved next to bolster Fidel Castro in Cuba. Khrushchev dispatched military advisors, air defenses, and ballistic missiles to the island. Photographs from U.S. surveillance planes revealed the missile launchers on October 14, 1962, although the presence of offensive weapons only 90 miles off the Florida coast violated no law or treaty. Unwilling to accept the direct threat to national security, the Kennedy administration decided to remove the missile sites from Cuba.
After the National Security Council narrowed the military options to either an air strike or a naval blockade, Kennedy chose the latter. Though constituting an act of war, the commander-in-chief described it as a “quarantine” of Cuba. He also put SAC bombers on a 15-minute alert, while fighter squadrons and anti-aircraft batteries deployed to Florida. Moreover, submarines armed with Polaris missiles moved within range of the Soviet Union. With the approval of the Organization of American States, or OAS, the Navy's Second Fleet began enforcing the “quarantine” on October 24. Castro cabled Moscow and demanded an immediate nuclear strike. As five Soviet ships steamed toward the U.S. line in the water, Khrushchev imagined “the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war.”
In the end, a last-minute compromise averted war. The Kremlin removed the missiles from Cuba, while the Kennedy administration promised not to invade the island. Though not part of a back-channel deal, the American military later removed outmoded Jupiter missiles from Turkey. The U.S. and the Soviet Union proceeded to negotiate the Limited Test-Ban Treaty, which pushed all nuclear testing underground. As the Cuban missile crisis faded from memory, the mushroom-shaped cloud eventually became a visual cliché of the arms race.
Conclusion
World War III did not happen, but anti-communist and communist nations engaged in a long and bitter contest to win the future. Even as the U.S. managed the armed forces for peacetime, the strategy of containment required that they assume a greater role in shoring up allies around the globe. The Korean peninsula at mid-century became a key flashpoint, where Americans fought for three years in a war without parallel. Imposing defense cuts in the aftermath, the federal government promised a New Look to military might. Nuclear arms that turned a hostile country into a radioactive desert seemed less expensive than maintaini
ng conventional forces. The Army, which found it difficult to match the innovations of the Air Force and the Navy, promised a “flexible response” to a fluid state of international affairs. What Eisenhower dubbed the “military-industrial complex” generally met the challenges of the Cold War.
More often than not, the American military perceived the Cold War through a shadowy world that seemed remote from the realities of a combat zone. While coming to terms with the possibility of a nuclear holocaust, the Pentagon formulated strategic concepts with analogies about Munich and metaphors about dominos. An either-or mentality obscured the extent to which the U.S. fell short of its own rhetoric about freedom. At the same time, the dictatorship of Stalin evinced an authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic style that fueled distrust about the “iron curtain.” Beginning in 1945, the Kremlin sought to enhance the security of the Soviet Union by depriving other nations of any opportunity to seek their own. The crumbling of European empires multiplied the disagreements between the superpowers. In the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the creators of the atomic age, the U.S. and the Soviet Union behaved like “two scorpions in a bottle.”
Throughout the atomic age, the U.S. committed assets to stop an aggressive rival from threatening freedom around the globe. The defensive barrier of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans no longer shielded North America from the terrors of jets, missiles, and satellites. Men and women in uniform strove to contain adversaries not only in Europe but also in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. By the early 1960s, the Army, Navy, and Air Force prepared to fight “two and a half wars” simultaneously. While providing direct and indirect aid to foreign governments, the military establishment planned for the long haul. The tools for national security included a tremendous arsenal that protected the country from any foe and safeguarded the interests of the American people. American warriors readied for action but found few precedents for the battles of the Cold War.
Looking for inspiration in the past, the Cold War generation remembered the battles of their forefathers. While military personnel placed a premium on massive firepower, only a handful of soldiers, sailors, or airmen witnessed first-hand the damage of an atomic blast. The remoteness of war, moreover, left civil society ambivalent about the meaning of popular catchphrases such as “sound patriotism” and “strong defense.” In 1962, the federal government formed a special committee chaired by Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, to create a National Military Museum for educating the public. Projecting a cost of $40 million, the committee recommended locating several exhibits for tourists along the Potomac River. Under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, the grounds near the U.S. capital would include an airfield, ships, silos, bunkers, and trenches. Before the plans were shelved, critics of a military-friendly mall denounced it as a “Disneyland of destruction.”
Essential Questions
1 What caused the outbreak of the Cold War?
2 In what ways was the armed conflict in Korea limited?
3 Why did the American military shift from a New Look to a “flexible response”?
Suggested Readings
Aliano, Richard A. American Defense Policy from Eisenhower to Kennedy. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975.
Bacevich, Andrew J. The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army between Korea and Vietnam. Washington D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1986.
Crane, Conrad C. American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950–1953. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000.
Dobbs, Michael. One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. New York: Vintage, 2008.
Gaddis, John Lewis. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Halberstam, David. The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War. New York: Hyperion, 2007.
Hastings, Max. The Korean War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.
Hoopes, Townsend, and Douglas Brinkley. Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1992.
Huebner, Andrew J. The Warrior Image: Soldiers in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
Kaplan, Fred. The Wizards of Armageddon. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
Mershon, Sherie, and Steven Schlossman. Foxholes and Color Lines: Desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Miller, David. The Cold War: A Military History. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
Monahan, Evelyn, and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee. A Few Good Women: America's Military Women from World War I to the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New York: Knopf, 2010.
Newhouse, John. War and Peace in the Nuclear Age. New York: Knopf, 1989.
Pearlman, Michael D. Truman and MacArthur: Policy, Politics, and the Hunger for Honor and Renown. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.
Sherry, Michael S. In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
Strueck, William. The Korean War: An International History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
14
The Tragedy of Vietnam (1964–1975)
Introduction
When officially taking command of more than a half-million Americans in Vietnam, General Creighton W. Abrams refused to waste time or money on a ceremony. On June 10, 1968, the man affectionately called “General Abe” entered his office, lit a cigar, and began the morning. Noticing the plush furniture that General William C. Westmoreland, his predecessor, left behind, he wanted to get rid of it all.
Abrams ordered his staff to remove the luxurious divans, wall hangings, and potted plants. While chomping on a cigar, he barked: “I don't want people coming over here – and their sons are fighting and dying – and I'm in there with three-inch carpets!” What he wanted for his office was a government-issued steel desk, small table, and side chairs.
After succeeding Westmoreland as the Army Chief of Staff, Abrams returned stateside and was diagnosed with cancer. Surgeons at the Walter Reed Army Hospital removed one of his lungs, which left a tremendous scar. Recovering in an uncomfortable hospital bed, he tearfully whispered to one visitor: “Nobody will ever know the goddamn mess Westmoreland left me in Vietnam.” Though still in pain, the 59-year-old mustered the strength to stand and to spend a few hours working at his Pentagon office each day.
On August 13, 1974, Abrams stood up for the U.S. Army one last time. He put on his uniform and marched with the Joint Chiefs into the Oval Office to greet President Gerald R. Ford, who took office following Richard M. Nixon's resignation. Afterward, Abrams's son drove him back to Walter Reed. He suffered from two blood clots, one in his right leg and another in his remaining lung. A long career that spanned three wars and assignments from West Point to the Pentagon ended on September 4, 1974. Abrams became the first Army Chief of Staff to die in office.
As staff members emptied his Pentagon office, they discovered a half-full box of cigars. No one smoked the cigars or threw them away. A wooden box soon appeared with a small metal plaque on top, identifying the contents as “General Abe's last cigars.”
Figure 14.1 “The Wise Men”: luncheon meeting, March 26, 1968. Collection LBJ-WHPO: White House Photo Office Collection, 11/22/1963–01/20/1969, National Archives
Death spared Abrams the agony of witnessing the outcome of the long war in Vietnam, where Americans failed to prevent the expansion of a socialist republic. The Pentagon was accustomed to planning decisive victories in the shortest time at the least cost, but the organized violence in Southeast Asia defied the best war plans. Despite the limited efforts of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, the U.S. managed to kill the enemy without securing an ally. The home front became divided, while the public distaste for the Selective Service system compelled a restructuring of the armed forces. Faced with grim prospects, the officer corps confronted one of the most difficult leadership
challenges in American military history.
The war in Vietnam arguably represented the most tragic ever experienced by men and women in uniform. Thanks to congressional authorization, the Johnson administration intensified military actions in Indochina after 1964. U.S. forces quickened the pace of operations from the Tonkin Gulf to the Mekong Delta, but a covert infrastructure kept many areas under the sway of communist-backed guerrillas. As the Nixon administration pursued “peace with honor,” the last American combat units withdrew from Southeast Asia in 1972. While the Cold War cast a powerful spell over the American people, the Vietnamese lost more than 3 million lives in their war for national unification.
The domino fell in Vietnam, where Americans fought a war made of slogans, charts, and statistics. Out of more than 200 million people, less than 5 percent of the U.S. population participated in the armed conflict. American troops suffered 211,471 casualties, with 47,369 killed in action and another 10,799 fatalities from other causes. The federal government spent more than $150 billion on the clash in Southeast Asia. However, few officials knew how to measure the full dimensions of a contest for legitimacy and power. Without an effective strategy to counter an insurgency, the American military lacked a framework to understand the war that occurred beyond the conventional battle lines.
Into the Quagmire
A Vietnamese war for national liberation reshaped the map of French Indochina. As the French withdrew their armed forces, the Geneva Accords of 1954 mandated a temporary partition along the 17th parallel. Called the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, it stretched westward from the South China Sea to Laos. The decolonized landscape represented a bewildering cauldron of competing ethnic, religious, economic, and political groups.
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