Dwight Eisenhower

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Dwight Eisenhower was the president that was the closest to George Washington, both avoided making mistakes and they got the big decisions right. They served during extremely dangerous times: Washington was tasked with holding the fragile republic together, Eisenhower with leading the nation at the beginning of the Nuclear Age.

Many times during Eisenhower’s term he was urged by his generals to use nuclear weapons, including a first strike against the Soviet Union. In this situation Eisenhower asked them: “I want you to carry this question home with you. Gain such a victory, and what do you do with it? Here would be a great area from the Elbe to Vladivostok torn up and destroyed, without government, without its communications, just an area of starvation and disaster. I ask you what would the civilized world do about it? I repeat there is no victory except through our imaginations.” By showing the woes of waging a nuclear war, and resisting the suggestions to start one, Eisenhower likely saved civilization.

When Eisenhower entered office, he was faced with the stalemated, but ongoing Korean War. South Korean president Syngman Rhee and US General Mark Clark wanted to invade North Korea again and push the Chinese back into China reunifying the country. Their plans even included the usage of tactical nuclear weapons against the Chinese, but Eisenhower pushed these plans aside and worked towards a peaceful settlement. Eisenhower realized that unlimited war in the nuclear age was unthinkable and limited war was unwinnable, so he skillfully ended the war by hinting that he might go nuclear if a peace settlement could not be negotiated. We know now that Eisenhower was bluffing, but he was able to get an armistice along the current borders of North and South Korea. This is an instance where Eisenhower prudently accepting a good conclusion to an event rather than risking a massive setback by trying to take the entire Korean peninsula. The original aim of the Korean War was to expel the northern invaders from the south, but Harry Truman went beyond these aims trying to take the whole peninsula against the warnings of the Chinese. This ability to avoid major errors served both Eisenhower and the United States quite well.

With the Korean war over, Communist China renewed their plans to take over the island of Formosa, known today as Taiwan. In August of 1954 China started shelling the Quemoy and Matsu islands as a precursor of a full fledged invasion of Taiwan. In September 1954, Congress granted Eisenhower the authority to use U.S. military power in the Taiwan Strait. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended the use of nuclear weapons on mainland China, but Eisenhower resisted pressure to use nuclear weapons or involve American soldiers in the conflict. Not wanting to allow Communist China to take over Taiwan, where over 1.3 million anti-communist had fled after the fall of mainland China, Eisenhower declared that the United States was committed to defending it from armed attack. The United States and Taiwan signed the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty on December 2nd of 1954, where both sides pledged to aid each other in the case of a military attack. Without Eisenhower’s policies, Taiwan would have most likely been taken over by Communist China.

By the time Eisenhower became president, the United States already had advisors in Vietnam and was paying over half of the cost for France’s war there. When the French were on the brink of collapse in Indochina at Dien Bien Phu, they begged the United States to intervene. Most of Eisenhower’s advisors wanted him to enter the war, some even suggested the use of nuclear weapons to save the French. Eisenhower was dead set against going to war in Vietnam stating, “This war in Indochina would absorb our troops by divisions!” He further stated: “The presence of ever more numbers of white men in uniform probably will aggravate rather than assuage Asiatic resentments.”  After France’s failure at Dien Bien Phu, the Geneva Accords were signed that split Vietnam along the 17th parallel. Eisenhower continued to aid South Vietnam in their struggle against the Communist North, but he bequeathed to John Kennedy pretty much the same situation in Vietnam that Truman left to him. Eisenhower wisely stayed out of the war in Vietnam, unfortunately, those that followed him weren’t as wise.

In 1949 the American, British and French occupation zones in Germany were combined to form the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). In response the Soviet Union responded by creating the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Eisenhower knew that Western Europe could not defend itself from the Soviets without either the help of the West Germans or a large ongoing American military force stationed there. Eisenhower wanted Europe to have a larger stake in its own defense, and he supported West Germany aiding in that defense. Eisenhower favored the European Defense Community (EDC), which would have formed a supranational military force to defend Western Europe, with German forces integrated into EDC. The French, however, failed to ratify the treaty in 1954, ending any chance of the EDC. At this point Eisenhower supported rearming Western Germany and making them a member of NATO. The Soviets first started rearming the East Germans in 1946, increasing the threat to Western Europe. During the London Conference in September of 1954, it was decided to establish the West German military within the framework of NATO and under NATO command. West Germany was rearmed in 1955 and quickly joined NATO four days later. Eisenhower longed for a reunified Germany as a member state of NATO, but he realized that it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. In 1990, Eisenhower’s dream of a strong unified Germany became a reality with the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. Eisenhower was proud of his success in Germany, which saw its transformation into a successful democracy and an equal member of the NATO alliance.

In November of 1958 Nikita Khrushchev delivered a speech demanding the withdraw of American, British and French forces from their occupation zones in Berlin within six months. East Germany was losing its most productive citizens to West Berlin, which was an embarrassment to the Soviets. Khrushchev’s ultimatum, to turn the city over to East Germany, was a desperate attempt to shore up the East German regime.  West Berlin also stood as a stark contrast between the differences of capitalism and communism. In March of 1959 Eisenhower delivered a strong response stating that the United States would not give in to pressure from the Soviet Union. With the threat of nuclear war in the air, Khrushchev and Eisenhower met at Camp David. Eisenhower had a brilliant idea, he asked Khrushchev to visit his farm in Gettysburg just twenty miles away. When Khrushchev finally agreed, Eisenhower called his son’s wife, Barbara, and told her to have all three of his grandchildren waiting on the porch of the farm in half an hour. It worked! Eisenhower had divined that Khrushchev was a sentimentalist, and that he too would be worried about his grandchildren in a nuclear armed world. With this Khrushchev removed his ultimatum.

After World War II Austria was divided into four occupation zones in the same manner as Germany. The main sticking point on reunification of Austria was that the Soviet Union did not want Austria to become part of any western defense initiative. After West Germany joined NATO in May of 1955, without first being reunified with Eastern Germany, the Soviet Union realized that there was little they could do to stop the western zones of Austria from unifying and joining NATO. Maybe the Soviets even feared that the western zones of Austria would be joined with West Germany. In 1955, after years of negotiation, Austria was reunified as a free and neutral nation along the lines Switzerland.

On October 23rd of 1956 revolution broke out in Hungary with rebels winning the first phase of the revolution. On the 4th of November Soviet troops and tanks rolled in brutally crushing the rebellion. Critics charged that Eisenhower failed by not helping the Hungarian freedom fighters but providing assistance to Hungary could have sparked a world war, and possibly ended in a nuclear exchange. Eisenhower knew that U.S. involvement in Hungary could lead to disaster, so he accepted a minor setback rather than take a massive risk. Even if a war would have been limited to Hungary, a war behind the iron curtain would have been difficult to win. It would have also given the Soviets a precursor to take West Berlin and launch attacks elsewhere.

On October 29th of 1956 Israel invaded Egypt in response to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalizing the Suez Canal on July 26th. Britain and France joined Israel in its attack in what came to be known as the Suez Crisis. When Egypt seized the canal, it closed the canal and the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. International negotiations on control of the canal had been ongoing since its seizure. British prime minister, Anthony Eden, believed Eisenhower would go along with the invasion as a fiat accompli, even though Eisenhower openly opposed the use of force during the crisis. Eisenhower was honoring the Tripartite Declaration of 1950, which guaranteed territorial status quo under the Arab Israeli armistice agreements of 1949. The Soviet Union warned that it might intervene on the Egyptian side by sending troops or launching rocket attacks on Britain, France and Israel. Eisenhower cautioned the Soviets against direct involvement in the conflict and against reckless talks of using nuclear weapons. If the Soviets did attack either Britain or France, the United States would be obligated under the NATO agreement to come to their aid, which could lead to a third world war. Believing it was better to end the Egyptian war than to risk a much larger conflict, Eisenhower put economic pressure on Britain, France and Israel to force their withdrawal. Eisenhower risked his reelection chances to secure the peace, as most Americans favored the British, French and Israelis in the conflict. Even beyond the threat of a war, Eisenhower felt that if it acquiesced to the invasion of Egypt, the resulting backlash might win the Arab world over to the Soviets.

In July of 1949 the National Security Council declared that Iran was “a continuing objective in the Soviet program of expansion.” If the Soviet Union took over or dominated Iran, it could take control of the Middle eastern and its oil supplies. The Soviets armed Kurdish tribesmen across the border, providing espionage training in Baku, spearheaded propaganda attacks within Iran, and used the Communist Tudeh Party as its political arm in Iran. Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh had aligned himself with the fanatical Ayatollah’s, who had assassinated the previous prime minister, and the Soviet backed Tudeh Party. As Mosaddegh’s coalition fractured, he became ever more authoritarian and reliant on the Tudehs . When Mosaddegh “postponed” elections and tried to dissolve parliament to make himself dictator, the CIA stepped in to help restore the Shah to power.

Recent scholarship has shown that Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz aimed to institute a Marxist regime. Arbenz believed that Guatemala required significant reforms before it would be ready for Communism, and he started his land reform program to create the conditions for an eventual Marxist state. Arbenz was receiving weapons shipments from the Soviet satellite state of Czechoslovakia. The CIA stepped in and helped the anti-communist rebels free Guatemala from the communist regime.

The CIA aided the Dalai Lama in his escape when Communist China cracked down during the 1959 Tibet uprising. Without the CIA’s help the Dalai Lama would likely have been captured and killed by the Communist. The CIA further tried to help Tibet gain freedom from Communist China after its takeover in 1950.

Eisenhower deserves far more credit on civil rights than he receives. Eisenhower pushed for the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, the first civil rights bills passed since The Civil Rights Act of 1875. Southern Democrats, led by Lyndon Johnson, secured an amendment to the 1957 law that required a jury trial to determine whether a citizen had been denied their right to vote. In the south, where African Americans couldn’t serve on juries, such trials were unlikely to ensure black voting rights. Although Eisenhower was unhappy with the watered-down bill, and even considered vetoing it, he signed it as a first step to civil rights. Eisenhower was also the first President since Ulysses Grant to use federal troops to protect civil rights when he sent the 101st Airborne to Arkansas to ensure the safety of African American students attending Central High School. In 1948 Truman issued an executive order to desegregate the military, but desegregation was slow under Truman.  Eisenhower rapidly completed the desegregation of the military and he further desegregating the US government. Perhaps Eisenhower’s biggest contribution to civil rights was through his selection of judges for the Supreme Court and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covered the deep south. Eisenhower shaped the judiciary that pushed the South towards including blacks as first class citizens. Democratic Senator James Eastland, who was staunchly opposed to civil rights, later remarked that the “Fifth Circuit had done something that the Supreme Court couldn’t do, that they brought racial integration to the deep south a generation sooner than the Supreme Court could have done it.”

When Eisenhower became President McCarthyism was in full swing. The main causes of McCarthyism were the creation of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1945 and infiltration of Soviet spies, like Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, in the administrations of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Rather than get down in the dirt with McCarthy, like Truman did, Eisenhower avoided making any reference to McCarthy in public. Eisenhower knew the more attention that he paid to McCarthy, the more powerful he would become. Eisenhower worked behind the scenes to discredit McCarthy, eventually leading to McCarthy’s downfall.

Eisenhower knew what few did others at the time: that a thriving economy was the basis of military power. Eisenhower worked towards creating a strong economy and a balanced budget. People living in the 1950s were better off than they had ever been before. Personal income rose by 45 percent and home ownership went from 55% to 62%.

Eisenhower’s most ambitious domestic project, the Interstate Highway program, established the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, created a 41,000-mile road system. This highway project made driving long distances faster and safer. The new highways also had the added benefit of allowing people to move out of Decaying, overcrowded cities to outlying locations. Eisenhower also established NASA as a civilian program to coordinate America’s activities in space.

The Eisenhower years were something of a golden age. There were no wars, no riots, no inflation, nothing but peace and prosperity. Some argue against Eisenhower’s usage of CIA covert actions, but he overturned a Marxist regime in Guatemala, halted a communist takeover of Iran and he saved the Dalai Lama from Communist Chinese forces. These victories were all positives for the United States and the world at large, and he gained them without risking war. For eight years Eisenhower kept the peace without yielding to communist aggression.