From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (109 page)

In Western Europe, Eisenhower and Dulles brought to fruition policies initiated by Truman and Acheson. From the outset, relations with the major European allies were difficult at best. Dulles doubted the toughness of British and French leaders.
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Since Soviet bombers could not reach the United States, London and Paris, on the other hand, feared that the new administration's nuclear bluster put them at risk. The relationship between Dulles and British foreign minister Anthony Eden was further complicated by a personality clash that evolved into intense personal hatred.

West Germany's independence and rearmament remained the most troublesome issues. Like its predecessors, the new administration saw NATO and collective security as the keys to European defense and German rearmament as indispensable to NATO. An alliance strengthened by an armed West Germany could meet the Soviet threat, while NATO would also keep in check a rearmed West Germany. Still haunted by bitter memories of two world wars, France naturally balked at the idea of a revived and rearmed Germany. French leaders proposed a European Defense Community (EDC) that would merge German forces into an integrated military organization, thereby precluding an independent German army and presumably giving France some control over German forces. But Britain's refusal to join EDC dimmed French enthusiasm. Weakened and divided by the war in Indochina and worried about Germany, a nervous and chronically unstable France slew its brainchild. "Too much integration,
too little England," Prime Minister Pierre Mendes-France complained.
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Even Dulles's threats of an "agonizing reappraisal" of U.S. policies failed to sway French leaders. In August 1954, the French parliament rejected EDC, a "dark day for Europe," German chancellor Konrad Adenauer moaned. "A grave event," Dulles concurred.
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French rejection of EDC stunned the allies into shockingly rapid resolution of their most nettlesome issue. Deeply committed to EDC, the United States, for one of the few times in the postwar era, took a backseat, permitting Churchill and Eden to devise an ingenious compromise, the so-called London Agreements, that retained some features of EDC while rearming West Germany within the framework of NATO. At a nine-power conference in September 1954, an obviously agitated but uncharacteristically silent Dulles deferred to Britain. The allies then achieved in a brief period what they had been unable to do before and produced a result that improved on the European Defense Community.
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The conferees constructed a Western European Union on the foundation of the 1948 Brussels Treaty and expanded it to include Italy and West Germany. Its military forces were placed under NATO command. German rearmament was thus made more palatable by giving a U.S. commander control over the size and use of German forces. Adenauer also agreed not to produce warships, bombers, and atomic, biological, and chemical weapons. In return, the Western powers recognized West Germany's sovereignty. Exactly ten years after the end of war in Europe, the Allied occupation ended. The Truman program was completed. United States officials continued to pay lip service to unification, but they preferred a separate, rearmed West Germany tied to the West. The division of Europe was sealed for a generation. Western Europe settled into an unaccustomed period of stability, its once warring nations at peace with each other for the first time in decades, their internal politics fixed along centrist lines.
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An unhappy Soviet Union responded to the European arrangements by forming its military counterpart to NATO, the Warsaw Pact.

German rearmament also led to the neutralization of Austria and a top-level summit meeting in Geneva. To improve its world position and gain breathing space for dealing with urgent domestic problems, the Soviet leadership set out to heal wounds opened by Stalin. A veritable globetrotter
compared to his reclusive predecessor, the ebullient Khrushchev traveled to China, where with great ceremony he gave back Port Arthur and pushed for closer economic ties. He also flew to Belgrade to patch up relations with Tito. Fearing that Austria might go the way of Germany, he dropped a prior demand conditioning withdrawal of Red Army troops on German neutrality and asked simply for Austrian neutrality. The result was the Austrian State Treaty of May 1955. Having previously affirmed that Soviet withdrawal from Austria was the key to resolving other issues, Eisenhower had little choice but to succumb to Soviet appeals for a summit. To do otherwise, he conceded, would make him appear "senselessly stubborn in my attitude."
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The Geneva summit of May 1955 was significant mainly in that it took place, the first such meeting since the end of World War II. Unschooled in the conventions of great-power diplomacy, the Soviet leaders worried about how to behave and whether they would be treated as equals. Khrushchev's insecurities were magnified upon arrival by the fact that his plane was much smaller than Eisenhower's—"like an insect," he later barked.
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Khrushchev and Bulganin clung desperately to hopes of somehow undoing West German ties to NATO. The Eisenhower administration was equally wary, fearing that the summit might disrupt hard-won Western unity, a fear underscored when the British proposed negotiations on German unification. Dulles had acquiesced only grudgingly to the idea of a summit and advised the president—known for his broad and winning grin—to appear stern and unsmiling. The administration made clear it would consider German unification only in the context of discussion of freedom in Eastern Europe and on condition that Germany remained tied to the West, terms that ensured no substantive negotiations. Bulganin sprang on the United States sweeping disarmament proposals that were difficult to reject without appearing to stand in the way of easing world tensions. Eisenhower countered by proposing mutual aerial surveillance—"Open Skies"—which the Soviets summarily dismissed as legalized spying. The two sides engaged in bizarre and surreal banter about the USSR joining NATO. Despite much brave rhetoric about the "spirit of Geneva," the conference adjourned without agreement. Eisenhower and Dulles believed they were moving in the right direction before the summit and did not want to be thrown off course. Khrushchev may have concluded that the Americans feared nuclear war as much as he and thus was tempted to initiate games of nuclear chicken.
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Having cobbled together almost despite themselves a shaky equilibrium in Europe and East Asia, the Cold War combatants in the mid-1950s shifted to the Third World, where they competed vigorously for the allegiance of nations emerging from colonialism. The Middle East took center stage in this new phase of the Cold War and posed especially complex challenges. Throughout the region, revolutionary nationalists struggled to gain full independence and sought to exploit the Cold War to their advantage. Americans sympathized with nationalist aspirations. Eisenhower privately puzzled over why the United States could not "get some of the people in these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us," conveniently forgetting that skin color, America's own imperial past, and its close ties with the Western colonial powers tainted it in their eyes.
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Khrushchev's late 1955 entrée into the Middle East through an arms deal and trade agreements with Egypt struck alarm bells in the West. Eisenhower and the men around him viewed Third World peoples as childlike, sometimes irresponsible, not ready for full independence, and especially vulnerable to clever propagandists like the Communists. The administration increasingly feared that Arab nationalism might veer to the left and that Allied obstructionism would facilitate that outcome. "We must have evolution, not revolution," Dulles averred.
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The Arab-Israeli conflict, of course, added yet another volatile ingredient to an already explosive mix.

Eisenhower and Dulles significantly deepened U.S. involvement in the Middle East. They shared in full measure their predecessors' assessment of the region's importance for its military bases, lines of communication, and huge reservoirs of oil. They sought to promote stable, friendly governments capable of withstanding Communist-inspired subversion and willing to resist aggression. Exaggerating both the Soviet threat and Arab susceptibility to Moscow's influence, Eisenhower went much further than Truman, mounting covert operations to overthrow unfriendly governments, forging a regional anti-Communist alliance, attempting to mediate the Arab-Israeli dispute, and even employing military force. More often than not, the United States found itself hopelessly snarled in the raging conflicts between Arabs and Israelis, Arabs and Arabs, and Arab nationalism and the European colonial powers.

Eisenhower's first major intrusion into the Middle East maelstrom came in 1953 in Iran, a focal point of U.S., British, and Soviet rivalry since 1941 and an early Cold War battleground. By the time the new administration took office, Iran once more had become the center of international attention when a bitter dispute over decolonization issues took on Cold War overtones. Long resentful of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company's (AIOC) domination of their nation's most valuable resource and its shameful treatment of Iranian workers, nationalists in 1951 voted to take over the giant British corporation. They were led by newly elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, an enigmatic, eccentric, and immensely colorful figure. Nearly seventy years old, tall and balding, with an elongated, sharply protruding nose, the European-educated prime minister had a well-rehearsed flair for the dramatic. He often received visitors in his bedroom dressed in pajamas and burst into tears in the midst of conversation or speeches. He also had a xenophobic streak and a tendency toward political self-destruction. A traditional liberal, he was willing to cooperate with Communists when it suited his needs. Americans had little sympathy with British oil interests, but they also abhorred nationalization and hesitated to undermine a major ally. They increasingly feared that instability in the region along the Soviet Union's southern border might tempt Moscow's involvement. The Truman administration thus sought in vain to mediate the conflict. The crisis intensified in 1952 when Mosaddeq's government broke relations with Britain.
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Eisenhower quickly changed U.S. policy from mediation to intervention. As in other areas, Americans in Iran blurred distinctions between local nationalism and Communism. They suspected Mosaddeq of being a Communist or a tool of Communists. His clumsy efforts to exploit the Cold War by warning of a Communist takeover and even flirting with Iran's leftist Tudeh Party only confirmed their suspicions. They also viewed him as unreliable, unpredictable, and weak, even effeminate—Dulles called him "that madman"—and therefore an easy mark for wily Communists. Eisenhower had come to appreciate the value of covert operations in World War II as an inexpensive and relatively risk-free means to undermine untrustworthy governments. CIA director Dulles affirmed that when a country was vulnerable to a Communist takeover "we can't wait for an engraved invitation to come and give aid."
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The United States thus
joined with Britain in the spring of 1953 in a plot to replace Mosaddeq with the youthful and presumably more pliable Shah Reza Pahlavi, whom the prime minister had just removed from power. In what was called Project Ajax, CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of Rough Rider Teddy, hired local agitators to destabilize an already fragile Iranian political system and used satchels of cash to purchase the loyalty of key elements in the army. Partly as a result of the shah's irresolution—the CIA called him a "creature of indecision"—the scheme nearly backfired. It was salvaged by the persistence of Iranian dissidents, Roosevelt's refusal to obey orders to return home, and Mosaddeq's political miscalculations. In August, the prime minister was overthrown and replaced by the shah. The coup represented a major short-term victory for U.S. policy. The United States supplanted Britain as the dominant power in a pivotal Cold War nation and gained a grateful ally in the shah, and U.S. oil companies got a 40 percent interest in the international consortium that replaced AIOC. The coup also marked a major turning point in Iran's modern history, a retreat from at least the semblance of parliamentary government to what became a brutal dictatorship. The United States' hand was carefully concealed, but Iranian nationalists knew what had happened—and remembered. When a revolution toppled the shah twenty-five years later, it quickly turned radical and virulently anti-American.
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Subsequent forays into the Middle East did not produce even short-term gains. To counter any Soviet military threat to the region, Eisenhower and Dulles, in keeping with the New Look's emphasis on regional alliances, encouraged in 1954 formation of the Baghdad Pact among the "northern tier" nations of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan. To avoid provoking the Soviets, on the one hand, and encouraging Israel to ask for similar commitments, on the other, the United States remained out of the alliance. But it dispensed military aid to induce nations to join and maintained close ties with the pact's military bureaucracy. Whatever value the alliance may have had in containing the Soviets was more than offset by its inflammatory impact in an already troubled region. It divided Arab states against each other—even members of the alliance—raising tensions still further. Britain's active participation struck Arabs as imperialism in another guise, especially antagonizing Egypt and encouraging Nasser's arms deal with the USSR. The pact further exacerbated the Arab-Israeli conflict.
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Also in the interest of checking possible Soviet advances in the Middle East, the administration in 1955–56, working closely with the British, launched the first of countless futile U.S. efforts to resolve the intractable Arab-Israeli dispute. Certain that his administration's "lopsided" partiality toward Israel had doomed Truman's diplomacy, they tried to be impartial and pushed hard to complete negotiations before the U.S. presidential election of 1956 brought forth powerful Israeli political pressures. The gambit went nowhere. The Arab states viewed Israel as a "cancer" that must be removed. The signing of the Baghdad Pact just when the peace initiative was presented did great damage. The plan called for Israel to give up territory won in the 1948 war, an idea repulsive to its leaders. "The whole proposal smacks of Munich," snarled the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Abba Eban. The administration's timing was atrocious. Just when it sought to mediate, tensions between Arabs and Israelis rose to such dangerous levels that Eisenhower contemplated sending U.S. forces to the Middle East to prevent a conflagration. The more the United States pressed for peace, the more strained Arab-Israeli relations became.
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To balance Soviet military aid to Egypt and appease domestic lobbyists, Eisenhower in the spring of 1956 approved a major arms deal for Israel.