From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (107 page)

John Foster Dulles became the nation's chief diplomat almost as a matter of inheritance. The grandson and namesake of late nineteenth-century secretary of state John W. Foster and nephew of Wilson's chief diplomat, Robert Lansing, he carried out his first diplomatic assignment at the age of thirty when he drafted the notorious reparations settlement at the Paris peace conference. As a partner in the powerful New York law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, he joined the world of corporate wealth and international finance. Like Woodrow Wilson the son of a Presbyterian minister, Dulles applied his intense religiosity to analyzing the tumultuous international politics of the 1930s and '40s. A great bear of a man, stern and unsmiling, he could appear brusque, even rude—"the only bull who carried his own China closet with him," Winston Churchill once snarled (and indeed Dulles was a collector of rare china).
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An indefatigable worker, as secretary of state he set a record by traveling more than a half million miles. Once viewed as the dominant force in policymaking in the Eisenhower years, he and the president in fact formed an extraordinarily close
partnership based on mutual respect in which the latter was plainly preeminent. Dulles's strident anti-Communist rhetoric and penchant for "brinkmanship" stamped him as an ideologue and crusader. He often served as a lightning rod for his boss. He was also a cool pragmatist with a sophisticated view of the world and ample tactical skills.
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The new administration restructured the mechanisms of policymaking. Confident in his own judgment on defense issues, Eisenhower kept his military advisers at arm's length. From extensive managerial experience in the army, he believed that careful staff work was essential for sound policy. He created the position of special assistant for national security affairs, a step with enormous long-range implications. He expanded attendance at NSC meetings and established separate planning and operations boards to facilitate decision-making and oversee implementation of policies. The full NSC met weekly, more often in times of crisis. In addition, the president met regularly, sometimes daily, in informal sessions over drinks with Dulles, often accompanied by his brother, CIA director Allen W. Dulles, and a kitchen cabinet of White House advisers.
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Especially in Eisenhower's first two years, Congress posed major challenges, ironically with Republicans giving the president the most headaches. Wisconsin senator Joseph R. McCarthy, now chairman of a Government Operations Committee, wreaked havoc through investigations of alleged Communist influence in the government. McCarthy's very success led directly to his failure. Televised hearings of his investigations of the army displayed to the nation the ridiculousness of some of his charges and the viciousness of his methods. Eisenhower eventually intervened to help check McCarthy. In December 1954, the Senate voted to censure him, ending his meteoric career in disgrace. The administration also fended off a constitutional amendment proposed and pushed doggedly by isolationist senator John Bricker of Ohio intended to thwart an alleged UN threat to U.S. sovereignty that would have sharply limited executive power in foreign policy. Eisenhower took a firm stand against the so-called Bricker Amendment and with crucial assistance from Texas Democratic senator Lyndon Baines Johnson secured its defeat. The Democrats regained control of Congress in 1954. Unwilling to challenge the president directly on major foreign policy issues, different groups of
legislators used the power of the purse to chip away at foreign aid spending and push for a larger defense budget.
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Even before the administration could formulate a national security strategy, Stalin's death raised new and troublesome issues. More tyrannical than ever in his final years, the dictator suffered extreme paranoia and ruled by sheer terror. His successors, Lavrenty Beria and Georgi Malenkov, were products of the Stalinist system and loyal henchmen. Each had played a key role in building Soviet military power. Beria had run the nuclear program. Beria nearly matched Stalin's cruelty toward subordinates—"our Himmler," the dictator called him.
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A shrewd and capable administrator, Malenkov was the more pragmatic of the two men. Both were technocrats rather than ideologues. Insecure at home, they saw themselves surrounded and threatened by U.S. bases. Soviet intelligence even warned that the United States might attempt to exploit the succession by starting a war. Against opposition from old-guard stalwarts like V. M. Molotov, Beria and Malenkov attempted to shift toward a less confrontational mode. At Stalin's funeral, Malenkov asserted that there was no "contested" issue that could not be resolved by "peaceful means." Fearing escalation of the Korean War, the new Soviet leaders talked to China about ending it. They sought to repair relations with Israel, Yugoslavia, and Greece. They warned that the emergence of new and more menacing nuclear weapons made war unthinkable and spoke of "peaceful coexistence." Hailing a "new breeze blowing on a tormented world," British prime minister Churchill urged Eisenhower to test the USSR's intentions by meeting with the new leaders.
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The administration responded coolly to Soviet overtures. Establishing a pattern that would be repeated time and again in Cold War presidential elections, Republicans in 1952 had blasted the Democrats for weakness, promising to combat Communism more vigorously, even to liberate "captive peoples." In light of its own belligerent rhetoric, the new administration could not jump into negotiations so soon after taking office. In any event, U.S. officials saw no real opportunity to ease tensions or negotiate substantive agreements. From Eisenhower down, they viewed the Soviet peace offensive, in the words of a State Department study, as a "treacherous stratagem of as yet indiscernible proportions" designed to undermine Western morale, expose divisions in the alliance, and hold
back Western rearmament.
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Eisenhower responded with a major speech on April 16, warning of the dangers of war and vowing his personal commitment to peace. Pointing to numerous hot spots, he insisted that Soviet words must be matched by deeds. Mainly, he appealed to Americans and allies to rally behind U.S. leadership for victory in the Cold War.
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Whether an opportunity for peace was missed, as diplomat Charles Bohlen later argued, can never be known for certain. Divisions within the Soviet leadership would have made major agreements at best difficult to achieve. The fact remains that the United States never tried.

Over the next six months, Eisenhower and his advisers formulated a grand strategy to fight the Cold War. Despite their 1952 attacks on the Democrats and promises of a "policy of boldness," the changes they initiated were more of means than ends. In office, the administration mollified the Republican right wing with fierce anti-Communist rhetoric. Dulles presided benignly over a purge of suspected leftists from the State Department, in the process ruining the lives of numerous dedicated public servants and eliminating much of its expertise on East Asia. For the most part, however, the administration's rhetoric was not matched by equally bold changes in policy. A fiscal conservative, Eisenhower was appalled by the enormous expenditures necessitated by NSC-68. Certain that the Cold War would last for many years, he feared that runaway defense spending could destroy the nation from within. He had no enthusiasm for further Korea-like military entanglements in peripheral areas. After an extended and painstaking review of options by several task forces, the administration settled on its New Look strategy. Despite Dulles's dismissal of European leaders as "shattered 'old people,' " it upheld the Democrats' commitment to collective security.
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It sustained the principles of containment while altering the methods used. Superior military forces would be maintained to deter aggression. To permit substantial budget cuts without weakening the nation's defense posture, the New Look relied on nuclear weapons—"more bang for the buck," it was called. Dulles publicly outlined a concept of "massive retaliation" by which the United States would respond to aggression at times and places and with weapons of its own choosing, leaving open the use of nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union itself. Conventional forces would be cut dramatically. New alliances would be formed to deter and contain Communist expansion and provide manpower for regional or global conflicts.
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Eisenhower believed that a shooting war was unlikely and that the enemy would rely mainly on subversion to achieve its goals. NSC-162/2 of October 1953 thus put great emphasis on the importance of propaganda and psychological warfare, calling for the use of "feasible" political and economic pressures, propaganda, and covert operations to "create and exploit troublesome problems the USSR, impair Soviet relations with Communist China, complicate control in the satellites, and retard the growth of the military and economic potential of the Soviet bloc." All weapons would be considered available for use. If the nation were to survive, a commission headed by World War II hero Gen. James Doolittle concluded in 1954, it must reconsider its long-standing concepts of fair play. "We must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective means than those used against us."
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While sticking to established foreign policy goals, Eisenhower's New Look significantly altered the means to achieve them.

The strategy of massive retaliation was immediately put to the test in East and Southeast Asia. In its first two years, the Eisenhower administration contemplated or threatened the use of nuclear weapons in responding to crises in Korea, French Indochina, and the Taiwan Straits. In each case, Dulles claimed the strategy had worked. The reality is far more complicated.

Eisenhower managed to end the fighting in Korea, but his success owed as much to circumstances as to diplomatic proficiency. The president and Dulles did maneuver skillfully among their Communist enemies, allies who wanted to liquidate the war as quickly as possible, and South Korean president Syngman Rhee and the Republican right who clung to the chimera of victory. The administration later claimed that its threats to use nuclear weapons forced the Communists to settle. In fact, its warnings of nuclear escalation were notably vague—and may never have got to Beijing. The decisive event in the Korean settlement seems to have been Stalin's death. Problems of succession and rising unrest in Eastern Europe compelled the new Soviet leaders to seek a breathing space through the relaxation of tensions. Eisenhower had insisted that peace in Korea was an essential first step. Mao Zedong seems grudgingly to have concluded that any possible gain from continuing the war would not be worth the cost. Rhee almost sabotaged the negotiations by releasing thousands of
prisoners of war. He had to be appeased with promises of a U.S. mutual security pact, yet another entangling alliance. The Korean War officially ended in July 1953, but what amounted to an armed truce left a still bitterly divided nation and an international trouble spot that would outlast the Cold War.
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A crisis in Indochina the following year posed for the administration one of the sternest challenges in its eight years in office. By the spring of 1954, the outcome of France's eight-year war against the Communist-led Vietminh hinged on the fate of a fortress at Dien Bien Phu, in the remote northwest corner of Vietnam, where twelve thousand French troops were besieged by vastly superior enemy forces. Facing certain defeat, France in late March appealed to the United States to intervene. Eisenhower and Dulles sympathized with the plight of French forces if not with French goals. Above all, they feared the consequences of French defeat. The loss of additional Asian real estate a mere five years after the fall of China would invite attacks from Democrats and the Republican right wing. A Communist victory in Vietnam would threaten the rest of Southeast Asia with its crucial sea routes, vital natural resources, and markets essential for Japanese economic recovery. The consequences might extend to Europe, where a French defeat could spell the end of Allied plans for mutual defense. Eisenhower and Dulles seriously contemplated air and naval intervention, even the use of nuclear weapons. To underscore the importance of Vietnam, the president unveiled publicly on April 7 the famous domino theory, warning that if it should fall to Communism the rest of Southeast Asia might soon follow, with reverberations extending to the Middle East and Japan. But Congress refused to endorse intervention without the participation of Great Britain and French pledges of independence for Vietnam. Despite weeks of frantic shuttle diplomacy and urgent appeals for "United Action," Dulles could not secure the requisite pledges from either ally. Amidst angry recriminations among the Western nations, Dien Bien Phu fell on May 7, 1954, just as a conference already under way at Geneva began to consider the fate of French Indochina.
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The continued threat of U.S. military intervention—largely bluff—appears to have helped the administration at Geneva snatch some
semblance of victory from near certain and total defeat. Dulles made a brief and stormy appearance, more scowling than usual, conducting himself, in the words of a biographer, with the "pinched distaste of a puritan in a house of ill repute," even reportedly turning his back when Chinese delegate Zhou En-lai extended a hand in greeting.
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To deter possible Chinese intervention and influence the outcome of the conference, the United States kept alive the possibility of military involvement. The U.S. threat may have helped bring about a settlement. The Chinese and Soviets each had their own reasons for ending the war. They compelled reluctant Vietminh leaders to accept much less in the way of peace terms than they believed their battlefield success entitled them to. Following Cold War precedents badly applied in Germany and Korea, the Geneva Accords of July 21, 1954, divided Vietnam temporarily at the 17th parallel and set elections for 1956 to unify the country.
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