WHEN EISENHOWER returned to Washington, Korea was at the center of his attention. The Communists said they were ready to begin again the armistice talks with the U.N. team at Panmunjom. Dulles wanted to reject the offer. At an NSC April 8 meeting, he told Eisenhower that “it was now quite possible to secure a much more satisfactory settlement in Korea than a mere armistice at the thirty-eighth parallel, which would leave a divided Korea.” Dulles believed that if a military armistice was not followed by a “political settlement,” meaning the unification of Korea, the United States would have to break the armistice.
Eisenhower would have none of that. He told Dulles “it will be impossible to call off the armistice and to go to war again in Korea. The American people will never stand for such a move.”1
In Panmunjom, meanwhile, both sides were negotiating seriously, taking new positions on the complex problem of Chinese and North Korean POWs who did not want to return home. The Indian government was proposing a compromise solution that appealed to both sides. But not to Dulles. He flew to Karachi for talks with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. This trip has since become famous, because during the talks Dulles supposedly told Nehru that the United States might feel compelled “to use atomic weapons if a truce could not be arranged.” In fact, no such direct warning was made, nor was it necessary. The full text of Dulles’ report to Eisenhower on his conversation with Nehru read: “Nehru brought up Korean armistice, referring particularly to my statement of preceding day, that if no (repeat no) armistice occurred hostilities might become more intense. He said if this happened it difficult to know what end might be. He urged withdrawal our armistice proposals as inconsistent with the Indian resolutions. He made no (repeat no) alternate proposal. He brought up again my reference to intensified operations, but I made no (repeat no) comment and allowed the topic to drop.”2
Dulles did not need to make any direct threats, much less depend on Nehru to pass them along to the Chinese. The Communists already knew that Eisenhower had a nuclear option; they knew that his patience was limited; they knew that he was under pressure to widen the war; they knew that the Americans had atomic warheads in Okinawa. On June 4, the Chinese presented a POW proposal that was in substantial accord with the last U.N. offer. Peace was in sight.
Rhee was furious. He had already told Eisenhower that a simple military armistice would mean “a death sentence for Korea without protest.” He proposed, instead, a simultaneous withdrawal of both the Chinese and U.N. forces in Korea, a mutual-defense pact between South Korea and the United States, and an increase in military aid. If this program was unacceptable, he begged Eisenhower to allow the Koreans to continue the fighting, for this “is the universal preference of the Korean people to any divisive armistice of peace.”3
In a long and sympathetic reply, Eisenhower told Rhee that “the moment has now come” for peace. “The enemy has proposed an armistice which involves a clear abandonment of the fruits of aggression.” As the cease-fire line would follow the front lines, which were slightly north of the 38th parallel, Rhee would emerge from the conflict with his territory intact, “indeed somewhat enlarged.” Eisenhower pledged that the United States “will not renounce its efforts by all peaceful means to effect the unification of Korea,” agreed to a mutual-defense pact, and promised substantial reconstruction aid for South Korea. He concluded, “Even the thought of a separation at this critical hour would be a tragedy. We must remain united.”4
On June 8, the Communists at Panmunjom agreed to the voluntary repatriation of POWs, with the provision that the processing of the prisoners would be observed by representatives of both sides. All that now remained was to establish a cease-fire line. That, and bringing Rhee around.
Rhee was in a strong position. Two-thirds of the battle line was manned by his troops. He could upset any armistice agreement by marching north. Further, his soldiers were the guards at the POW compounds. He had the sympathy of many Americans. And he had the apparent complete support of his own people. When the announcement of the POW agreement was made in Seoul, some 100,000 South Koreans took to the streets in a massive demonstration demanding a march to the north. The South Korean assembly rejected the proposed truce by a vote of 129 to 0.
On June 19, Eisenhower was holding a regular Cabinet meeting. An aide came in with a message. Rhee had released some twenty-five thousand POWs, Chinese and Korean, and they had quickly scattered over the countryside. This was a direct violation of the armistice agreements, and inevitably made the Chinese ask “whether the United States was able to live up to any agreement to which the South Koreans might be a party.” Eisenhower turned to his Cabinet, reported on what he had just learned, and commented that “we are coming to the point where it is completely impossible.” He said he could not understand the “mental processes of the Oriental. One thing I learned in five years out there is that we don’t know to what they will react.” Rhee, in Eisenhower’s view, was committing his people to national suicide.
Dulles thought Rhee had a legitimate point of view and suggested, “Let’s merely hold the line; try to carry on what we’ve done the last two years,” that is, continue the war. Eisenhower objected: “This would be a complete surrender to his blackmail.” Wilson said that was the other side of the “Oriental mind—he doesn’t consider it blackmail. After all, we dumped him out of the truce talks.” Humphrey said that the “only thing for us to do is what we can to keep face.” Eisenhower burst into laughter—“Imagine,” he said, “Westerners saving face!”
Dulles had the last word. He gravely informed Eisenhower that “this situation is inherent in the type of foreign policy we’re trying to pursue.” Failure to fight the Communists everywhere, failure to drive them back behind the Yalu, failure to support Chiang in an offensive on the mainland, failure to go for an all-out victory in Vietnam, all coupled with Eisenhower’s glittering promises in “The Chance for Peace,” made it impossible for the United States to pursue a clear and direct policy of resistance to Communism.5 The implication of Dulles’ remarks was clear—break off the truce talks and go for victory.
Eisenhower would not consider that. Instead, he sent Walter Robertson, an Assistant Secretary of State, to Seoul to try to talk reason to Rhee. Eisenhower also sent a stern warning to Rhee. Reminding the South Korean President that the Koreans had agreed to give the U.N. Command “authority over all land, sea, and air forces of the ROK during the period of the present state of hostilities,” Eisenhower said that the release of the prisoners “constitutes a clear violation of this assurance and creates an impossible situation.” Eisenhower told Rhee that “unless you are prepared immediately and unequivocally to accept the authority of the U.N. Command to conduct the present hostilities and to bring them to a close, it will be necessary to effect another arrangement.”6 Robertson, acting under Eisenhower’s direction, told Rhee what those “other arrangements” would be—a withdrawal of American troops, no more military support for the ROK, no reconstruction funds for South Korea, no mutual-defense pact.
Rhee resisted the pressure, helped by reports from the States that seemed to indicate a near revolt by Republican senators against their own Administration. Ralph Flanders had said that Robertson was putting “us in the position of threatening the Korean government with an attack from the rear while the ROKs were attacking the Communists at the front.” Bridges and McCarthy believed that “freedom-loving people” should applaud Rhee’s defiance of the armistice. An Old Guard representative introduced a resolution in the House commending Rhee for releasing the prisoners. And on July 5, the acting majority leader, Senator William Knowland (Taft was in the hospital for treatment of a cancer in his hip), blamed Eisenhower for a “breach” with Rhee and announced his support for Korean unification before any armistice agreement was signed.7
Despite the clamor, Eisenhower insisted that Robertson be firm with the old man. He was, and ultimately persuaded Rhee that it was futile for South Korea to try to go it alone. On July 8, Rhee finally issued a public statement promising to cooperate.
At 9:30 P.M. on July 26, Eisenhower received word of the truce signing. A half hour later, he made a radio and television address to the American people. The shooting was over, he said, a fact that he greeted with “prayers of thanksgiving.” Still, he felt it necessary to remind the American people that “we have won an armistice on a single battleground—not peace in the world. We may not now relax our guard nor cease our quest.” There were no victory celebrations, no cheering crowds in Times Square, no sense of triumph. Instead Republicans like William Jenner, McCarthy, and House Speaker Joe Martin complained because the Administration had not sought victory, while Lyndon Johnson warned that the armistice “merely releases aggressive armies to attack elsewhere.”8
The armistice was, despite its reception, one of Eisenhower’s greatest achievements. He took pride in it. He had promised to go to Korea; he had implied that he would bring the war to a close; he had made the trip; despite intense opposition from his own party, from his Secretary of State, and from Syngman Rhee, he had ended the war six months after taking office. Eisenhower was the only American who could have found and made stick what he called “an acceptable solution to a problem that almost defied . . . solution.”9 His solution was acceptable only because he had put his own immense prestige behind it; he knew that if Truman had agreed to such a settlement, Republican fury might have led to an impeachment attempt and certainly would have had a divisive effect on the country.
What stands out is Eisenhower the leader. The Supreme Allied Commander of 1945, the victor who would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender, had become the peacemaker of 1953, a man who would accept a compromise settlement that left him far short of victory, much less unconditional surrender. There were fundamental differences in the two situations, obviously, but this should not obscure the truth. The truth was that Eisenhower realized that unlimited war in the nuclear age was unimaginable, and limited war unwinnable. This was the most basic of his strategic insights.
One alternative between unimaginable and unwinnable was continued stalemate. That was the policy urged on him by nearly all his advisers, Republican colleagues, and most Democrats. At this thought, Eisenhower the man rebelled. The U.S. Army had suffered nearly one thousand casualties a week in Korea during the time since Rhee released the prisoners, on the eve of a successful completion of the truce. The thought of those five thousand dead and wounded boys made Eisenhower sick. The man who had ordered the Allied troops back onto the Continent and into the hell of the Bulge could not bear the thought of American boys dying for a stalemate. He wanted the killing ended, and he ended it.
Eisenhower liked to make up lists in his diary, lists of men who had pleased him or disappointed him, of events, of accomplishments. From the end of July 1953 onward, whenever he listed the achievements he was proudest of, he always began with peace in Korea.
• •
One thing he did not brag about, even in the privacy of his diary, was the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. Not that he was not pleased with the outcome, or proud of it, but that he just didn’t want it discussed, because he felt that the CIA’s triumphs should be kept secret.
Mossadegh headed a government that had seized the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (British owned) and then broken diplomatic relations with London. The British had retaliated by setting up a de facto blockade of Iranian oil; meanwhile the British, along with American oilmen, told Ike that Mossadegh was a Communist. In the spring of 1953, Foreign Secretary Eden came to Washington, to propose a joint effort between the British Secret Service and the CIA to topple Mossadegh.
Eisenhower was receptive, because of the emphasis he was putting on both the underdeveloped world and the CIA. Eisenhower and Foster Dulles spent many a cocktail hour together, holding wide-ranging discussions. More often than not, their talk came around to the underdeveloped world and the need to keep the poorer nations from going Communist. With NATO in place, an armistice in Korea, the battleground for the Cold War had shifted to the so-called Third World. Latin America, India, Egypt, Iran, Vietnam—these were the places where the free world was being challenged, or so Eisenhower and Dulles believed.
In meeting the challenge, Eisenhower intended to use the CIA in a much more active role than Truman had given it. Under Truman, the Agency had concentrated on its first responsibility, gathering and evaluating intelligence from around the world. Eisenhower believed the Agency could be used more effectively, indeed could become one of America’s chief weapons in the Cold War. Partly this was based on his experiences in World War II; he had been impressed by and grateful for the contribution to victory made by the British Secret Service, the French Resistance, and the American OSS. More important was Eisenhower’s fundamental belief that nuclear war was unimaginable, limited conventional war unwinnable, and stalemate unacceptable. That left the CIA’s covert action capability. Under Eisenhower’s leadership and Allen Dulles’ direction, the size and scope of the CIA’s activities increased dramatically during the 1950s. The beginning came in Iran in 1953.
It was the CIA’s first big-time coup. It was planned in the early summer of 1953. It was prepared by Allen and Foster Dulles, Beetle Smith, and Charlie Wilson. The aim of their plot was to depose Mossadegh and bring the Shah back to power; the means were out-and-out bribes for the Iranian Army officers. Code name for the plan was Ajax.
Before going into operation, Ajax had to have the approval of the President. Eisenhower participated in none of the meetings that set up Ajax, he received only oral reports on the plan, and he did not discuss it with his Cabinet or the NSC. Establishing a pattern he would hold to throughout his Presidency, he kept his distance and left no documents behind that could implicate the President in any projected coup. But in the privacy of the Oval Office, over cocktails, he was kept informed by Foster Dulles, and he maintained a tight control over the activities of the CIA.
Ajax was a great success. The Iranian Army arrested Mossadegh, the Shah returned, he cut a new oil deal that gave the American oil giants 40 percent of Iran’s oil, Eisenhower announced an $85 million economic aid package for Iran, and everyone was happy—except the Iranian people, and the British oil executives, who lost their monopoly.
Eisenhower had ordered the Mossadegh government overthrown, and it had been done. It seemed to him that the results more than justified the methods. That was an additional side of the man who had insisted on making peace in Korea and trying new approaches to Russia on disarmament. Where he thought it prudent and possible, he was ready to fight the Communists with every weapon at his disposal—just as he had fought the Nazis. There was no squeamishness, no doubts. Do it, he told the CIA, and don’t bother me with any details.10
The methods used were immoral, if not illegal, and a dangerous precedent had been set. The CIA offered the President a quick fix for his foreign problems. It was there to do his bidding; it freed him from having to persuade Congress, or the parties, or the public. The asset of the CIA greatly extended the President’s powers—at the expense of also greatly extending the risks of his getting into deep trouble.
• •
Taft’s death from cancer, on July 31, was a blow. The senator had surprised and pleased Eisenhower by his cooperative attitude. Despite Taft’s outburst when first informed of the Administration’s budget plans, he had persuaded many of the Old Guard congressmen to go along with Eisenhower’s proposals on such basic matters as taxes and expenditures. Responding to Eisenhower’s heartfelt pleas, he had managed to save much of the MSA appropriation. With Taft’s help, Eisenhower could deal with the Old Guard; without it, he anticipated great difficulties. Eisenhower released a statement saying that America had “lost a truly great citizen and I have lost a wise counselor and a valued friend.” Along with Mamie, Eisenhower paid a call on Taft’s widow in Georgetown. Holding Martha Taft’s hand in both of his, Eisenhower said, “I don’t know what I’ll do without him; I don’t know what I’ll do without him.”11
Eisenhower meant what he said, if only because Taft’s successor as majority leader in the Senate was William Knowland. Eisenhower’s contempt for the California senator was complete. “In his case,” Eisenhower wrote of Knowland in his diary, “there seems to be no final answer to the question ‘How stupid can you get?’ ”12
What especially bothered Ike about Knowland was the Senator’s blind opposition to any foreign involvement (save all-out aid to Nationalist China). Eisenhower wanted to get on with building a United States of Europe. To that end, he wanted Germany rearmed, unified, and brought into NATO and EDC as a full partner.
These had been among Eisenhower’s major goals as SACEUR, and he continued to make them the centerpiece of his European policy as President. Through Dulles, and through his private correspondence with European leaders, he pushed the projects. In September, he told French Premier Joseph Laniel that it was “urgent” that the French, in their relations with West Germany, “be guided by a new spirit of friendship and trust.” He said he was aware of the difficulties for the French involved in ratifying EDC, as “we are not blind to history.” But still he urged Laniel not to miss “this historic opportunity for a Franco-German rapprochement.”13
Eisenhower’s high hopes for EDC involved not only what he felt it could accomplish for Western Europe, but also the promise it held for the United States. A closely knit Western European community, held together by economic and military ties, protected through NATO by the American nuclear umbrella and through EDC by numerous all-European ground divisions, would not only be a source of security for the world but would end the need for MSA funds and allow Eisenhower to cut even further the American military budget. EDC, in short, would simultaneously provide greater security for the West, a smaller defense establishment for the United States, and lower taxes. EDC ratification received a new emphasis on August 12, when the Soviets successfully tested their own hydrogen bomb.
• •
There was another explosion coming on, one that Eisenhower paid little attention to although, like the Russian hydrogen bomb, it was one that he wished would never happen. It was the explosion in race relations in the United States.
Much as Ike wanted to ignore it, however, his Attorney General would not let him do so, and Ike had developed an unbounded admiration for Brownell. In his diary, Eisenhower wrote that Brownell was a man of consummate honesty, incapable of an unethical practice, a lawyer of the first rank, and an outstanding leader. He summed up, “I am devoted to him and am perfectly confident that he would make an outstanding president of the United States.”14 So Eisenhower necessarily had to pay attention when Brownell came to him to discuss the school segregation cases that were coming up before the Supreme Court.
Brownell told Eisenhower that the Court had requested the Attorney General to file a brief and an opinion in the cases. Requests for such amicus curiae briefs from the Court, Brownell assured Eisenhower, were not unique, although by no means was it an established practice. Eisenhower was not bothered by the Court’s request for a statement of fact on the Fourteenth Amendment as it related to segregation in the schools, but he did object to the Court’s further request that the Justice Department also submit its opinion on the subject. This, to Eisenhower, represented an abdication of responsibility. One reason he felt that way was his attitude toward separation of powers. “As I understand it,” he told Brownell, “the courts were established by the Constitution to interpret the laws; the responsibility of the Executive Department is to execute them.” He suspected the Court was trying to duck out of or avoid the most controversial social problem in America, that “in this instance the Supreme Court has been guided by some motive that is not strictly functional.” 15
Brownell very much wanted to give his own opinion, which was that segregation by race in public schools was unconstitutional. There was the rub. Eisenhower was fearful of the effect of a ruling outlawing segregation. Partly this reflected his own background and attitudes. Eisenhower was six years old when Plessy v. Ferguson established the doctrine of “separate but equal”; he had lived all his life with it. There were no Negroes in his home town, none at West Point. Eisenhower had spent virtually all his prewar career at Army posts in the South, or in the Canal Zone or the Philippines, where racism was, if possible, even more blatant. During the war, he had commanded a Jim Crow Army. Eisenhower had left the Army before Truman, in 1948, ordered the armed forces desegregated. Eisenhower had many southern friends and he shared most of their prejudices against Negroes. When he went down to Augusta, he listened to the plantation owners tell their jokes about the “darkies”; when he returned to Washington, in the privacy of his family, he would repeat some of those jokes.
During the campaign, Eisenhower had denied that race relations were an issue, a startling statement in view of the Democratic Party split in 1948 over the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC). Indeed, Eisenhower had bid for southern votes by his own refusal to endorse FEPC. But one of his core beliefs about the office he now held was that he was the President of all the people. That included Negro Americans. He had therefore announced, in his State of the Union message, that he would use his full authority to end segregation in the District of Columbia and in the armed forces.
That was done, to Ike’s credit, but those changes had little or no effect on the great bulk of Negro Americans. Plessy remained the law of the land. The sum total of Eisenhower’s program for the 16 million Negro Americans who were outside the federal establishment was to appeal to the southern governors for some sign of voluntary progress. Since every one of those governors had been elected by a virtually all-white electorate, and since every one of them was thoroughly committed to segregation as a way of life, as were the vast majority of their white constituents, the President could not have anticipated rapid or dramatic progress.
Not that he really wanted it. The civil-rights movement presented problems he did not understand, nor wish to study, much less to solve. He wanted to put those problems off, leave them to his successor. This was his great weakness as a political leader. His unwillingness to grapple with long-term problems and his inability to see clearly moral questions were to cost the nation, his party, and his reputation beyond measure.
Inadvertently, however, and unknowingly, he made a powerful contribution, indeed a critical one, to the civil-rights revolution. It happened because of the man he chose to be Chief Justice.
On the morning of September 8 the President was informed that Chief Justice Fred Vinson had died of a heart attack. Eisenhower flew back to Washington for the funeral. He mourned the passing of his old bridge-playing friend, but inevitably his mind turned to the appointment of a successor. Eisenhower had already promised Earl Warren that he would have the first vacancy on the Court, but when he made that promise he did not expect that the vacancy would be that of the Chief Justice himself. Eisenhower therefore felt free to canvass other possibilities, and did so—including John W. Davis of West Virginia, the 1924 Democratic nominee for the Presidency and a lawyer who was arguing the South’s side in the segregation cases. Eisenhower also thought of John Foster Dulles, and indeed asked Dulles if he would take the appointment. Dulles said no, he preferred to stay with the State Department.
It was not that Eisenhower wanted to renege on Warren. Eisenhower had talked to Warren about his basic philosophy and was much impressed by the California governor. Brownell later recalled that Eisenhower “saw Warren as a big man; and his respect turned into a real crush.” To his brother Edgar, Eisenhower wrote that “from the very beginning of my acquaintanceship with Warren, I had him in mind for an appointment to the high court.” 16
But Eisenhower wanted to think long and hard before making what probably would be the most important appointment of his Presidency. “I’m not going to make any mistakes in a hurry,” he told one consultant. To the dean of the Columbia Law School, who had suggested some names, Eisenhower explained his approach. “My principal concern is to do my part in helping restore the Court to the position of prestige that it used to hold, and which in my opinion was badly damaged during the New and Fair Deal days.” He said he was seeking “a man of broad experience, professional competence, and with an unimpeachable record and reputation for integrity.” 17
Warren had all those qualifications, and others. Eisenhower could not be accused of paying off a political debt, because Warren had stayed in the race against him until the end at the convention. Warren was middle-of-the-road, so much so that Eisenhower’s reactionary brother Edgar denounced him as a left-winger, while Milton reported that he and his friends considered Warren to be dangerously to the right. Eisenhower responded to Milton: “Warren has been very definitely a liberal-conservative; he represents the kind of political, economic, and social thinking that I believe we need on the Supreme Court.” 18
In late September, Eisenhower announced a recess appointment of Warren as Chief Justice (Congress was not in session). Eisenhower made the appointment for all the reasons cited above, but the one that stands out is simplicity itself. Eisenhower personally knew many great lawyers, great judges, great men. He was a shrewd judge of character and talent. He wanted this appointment to be his best. He was convinced that Warren was the best man in the country for the post of Chief Justice.
When Congress gathered again in January 1954, Eisenhower sent Warren’s formal nomination to the Senate. There Senator Langer, helped by other Old Guard senators, held up confirmation. Eisenhower scribbled in his diary, “[If the] Republicans as a body should try to repudiate him [Warren], I shall leave the Republican Party and try to organize an intelligent group of independents, however small.” 19 Despite his many difficulties with Warren over the next seven years, he remained convinced that he had made the right choice.
• •
On October 8, Eisenhower opened a news conference with a prepared statement. The subject was the recent Soviet test of a hydrogen bomb. The President said the test had not come as a surprise, and added that the Soviets “now possess a stockpile of atomic weapons . . . and the capability of atomic attack on us, and such capability will increase with the passage of time.” Turning to the American situation, he said, “We do not intend to disclose the details of our strength in atomic weapons of any sort, but it is large and increasing steadily.” He assured the press that the armed forces had sufficient nuclear arsenals to carry out the specific tasks assigned to them. And he warned that “this titanic force must be reduced to the fruitful service of mankind.”20
Millions agreed with Eisenhower’s final sentence. More important, leading American scientists agreed, and indeed had already been calling for disarmament followed by research on peaceful uses of atomic power. Most important, the former scientific head of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, agreed. In July of 1953 Oppenheimer had published, in Foreign Affairs, an article titled “Atomic Weapons and American Policy.” In the article, Oppenheimer warned that an atomic arms race between the superpowers could only have disastrous results, and in any case it made no sense, because when America built its “twenty-thousandth bomb it . . . will not offset their two-thousandth.” In a vivid image, Oppenheimer compared the United States and the Soviet Union to “two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.” He insisted that the American people had to be told the truth about the size and power of their atomic arsenal, and called for “candor on the part of the representatives of the people of their country.”21
Oppenheimer’s article sharpened, but did not begin, the debate in the Eisenhower Administration over atomic policy. As this was unquestionably the most momentous problem Eisenhower faced, he treated it with the utmost seriousness. He had made Oppenheimer the head of an advisory group to report to the President on what to do about the arms race; in addition, Oppenheimer had been chairman of the General Advisory Committee of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Eisenhower read and was impressed by Oppenheimer’s views; he agreed with the physicist that an atomic arms race was madness; he also believed that if the American people were told, in graphic detail, of the destructive power of the H-bomb, they would support him in any genuine disarmament proposal. The President therefore put C. D. Jackson to work on a speech designed to meet Oppenheimer’s call for candor. Jackson called the preparation of the speech “Operation Candor,” and worked on it through the spring and summer of 1953. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Oppenheimer’s basic idea.
Other top advisers were firmly opposed. Dulles had no faith whatsoever in any disarmament proposal. He believed in dealing with the Russians only from a position of overwhelming strength, and insisted that the various Soviet proposals so far received for disarmament were merely propaganda devices, designed to weaken NATO and to discourage the French from ratifying EDC. Admiral Lewis Strauss, chairman of the AEC, agreed with Dulles.
Strauss was a self-made millionaire (on Wall Street) and had been James Forrestal’s assistant during the war (thus his rank of admiral). Truman had first put him on the AEC in 1946; three years later Strauss had engaged in a bitter dispute with Oppenheimer over the hydrogen bomb. Oppenheimer did not want to build one, while Strauss—and Truman—did. In July 1953, Eisenhower appointed Strauss the chairman of the AEC (although he hardly knew the man). After Strauss’s swearing-in ceremony, Eisenhower took him aside and told him, “My chief concern and your first assignment is to find some new approach to the disarming of atomic energy.”22 Strauss ignored the President’s directive.
Eisenhower was between Oppenheimer and Strauss in his thinking, “encouraging both without offending either.” The President said that Jackson’s various drafts (which insiders were calling the “Bang! Bang! papers”), with their descriptions of atomic horrors leaving “everybody dead on both sides with no hope anywhere,” were too frightening to serve any useful purpose. “We don’t want to scare the country to death,” Eisenhower told Jackson, because he was afraid it would set off a congressional demand for outlandish and largely ineffective defense spending. On the other hand, ever since he had read his first report on the initial H-bomb test, he had had an impulse to inform the public about the awesome destructive power thereby unleashed. But each time he read another of Jackson’s drafts, the fear of an overreaction by Congress to a “Bang! Bang!” presentation overcame his insistence to tell the truth, and he kept instructing Jackson to tone it down. “Can’t we find some hope?” he asked Jackson.23
Jackson could not. Nor were his advisers much help. They either told him to build bigger bombs as fast as possible (Strauss) or build none at all (Oppenheimer).
Eisenhower mulled it over. He realized that he would have to come up with an idea of his own for a disarmament proposal, one that would not endanger security, that the Russians would not be likely to dismiss out of hand, and that would contain some genuine hope. Finally he hit on it. The United States and the Soviet Union could, he thought, make donations of isotopes from their nuclear stockpiles to a common fund for peaceful purposes, such as developing nuclear generators. In one stroke, the proposal would solve many problems. It would replace despair over atomic energy with hope; it did not require on-site inspection, always a stumbling block in any disarmament proposal; its propaganda advantages were obvious and overwhelming.
Further, it would reassure the American people “that they had not poured their substance into this whole development with the sole purpose of its being used for destruction.” Best of all, as Eisenhower wrote in his diary, if the Russians cooperated, “The United States could unquestionably afford to reduce its atomic stockpile by two or three times the amounts that the Russians might contribute . . . and still improve our relative position in the cold war and even in the event of the outbreak of war.” Finally, “Underlying all of this, of course, is the clear conviction that as of now the world is racing toward catastrophe.”24
Even as Eisenhower groped his way toward a genuine, new disarmament proposal, he got hit by a secret report from the Secretary of Defense that indicated the most famous American atomic scientist could not be trusted. Wilson told the President, over the telephone, that he had just received a report on Oppenheimer. It consisted of a letter from William Borden, the former director of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, to the Secretary of Defense. Borden charged that it was “more likely than not that J. Robert Oppenheimer is a Communist spy.”25 Borden had no new evidence to substantiate this charge, which had been around a long time, had been investigated, was widely known, and was widely disbelieved. What disturbed Wilson—and Eisenhower—was not so much what Borden was saying, but that McCarthy had become aware of the charges. It was imperative that the Administration act before McCarthy made the Oppenheimer charges his case.
The following morning, December 3, Eisenhower convened Strauss, Brownell, Wilson, Cutler, and Allen Dulles in the Oval Office. Eisenhower demanded to know how on earth Strauss could have cleared Oppenheimer for the AEC back in 1947, and why there had been no investigation of him since the Republicans took office. Strauss muttered that they could not have built the atomic bomb without Oppenheimer. Eisenhower then said that while he “wished to make it plain that he was not in any way prejudging the matter,” he wanted a “blank wall” placed between Oppenheimer and any further access to top-secret information until such time as a hearing had been completed. He told Brownell to get the entire FBI file on Oppenheimer and study it. He said he had himself examined the Borden charges and thought they provided “no evidence that implies disloyalty on the part of Dr. Oppenheimer.” However, Eisenhower added, “this does not mean that he might not be a security risk.” Eisenhower said he realized that if Oppenheimer had been feeding information to the Soviets, then cutting him off at this point “would not be a case of merely locking the stable door after the horse is gone; it would be more like trying to find a door for a burned-down stable.”26 He appointed a three-man committee to investigate the charges; Oppenheimer meanwhile was put into a state of suspension. McCarthy was blocked from exploiting the case.
• •
Simultaneously with the Oppenheimer case, Eisenhower had to deal with the segregation cases coming up before the Supreme Court. Unhappy with the idea of the Attorney General expressing his opinion on the unconstitutionality of segregation in the schools, Eisenhower nevertheless accepted Brownell’s advice that it had to be done. Indeed, he helped Brownell write his opinion. Still he worried. As always when he got back from Augusta, Eisenhower was full of sympathy for the white southerner’s point of view. He asked Brownell what would happen if the southern states abandoned public education, as they were threatening to do, and repeated his fear that the Court would make education a function of the federal government. Brownell assured him that the South “will work it out in ten to twelve years.”27
On December 2, Brownell told Eisenhower that Justice Warren “told me last night that my brief on the segregation cases was outstanding.” Eisenhower made it clear that he wanted no part for himself in the compliment.28 He had begun the process of refusing to associate himself and his prestige in any way with Brown v. Topeka.
• •
At 2 P.M. on December 8, Eisenhower gave his “Atoms for Peace” speech to the General Assembly. After opening words of praise for the U.N., Eisenhower launched into the Operation Candor part of his speech. It was much reduced from his original intention. He informed the world that the United States had conducted forty-two test explosions since 1945, that America’s atomic bombs were now twenty-five times more powerful than the original bombs used against Japan, “while hydrogen weapons are in the ranges of millions of tons of TNT equivalent.” Oppenheimer’s and Jackson’s thought that the President ought to reveal the size of the American arsenal gave way to this paragraph: “Today, the United States stockpile of atomic weapons, which, of course, increases daily, exceeds by many times the explosive equivalent of the total of all bombs and all shells that came from every plane and every gun in every theater of war in all of the years of World War II.” Eisenhower gave one additional illustration: “A single air group can now deliver to any reachable target a destructive cargo exceeding in power all the bombs that fell on Britain in all of World War II.” Atomic weapons, he added, had now achieved “virtually conventional status within our armed services.”
But the Russians also had the bomb, and were building more. An atomic arms race was under way. To continue it, Eisenhower said, “would be to confirm the hopeless finality of a belief that two atomic colossi are doomed malevolently to eye each other indefinitely across a trembling world.” Anything would be better. Eisenhower asserted that he was prepared to meet with the Soviets (and he announced that the four-power talks the Russians had requested would begin promptly) to discuss such problems as an Austrian treaty, Korea, and Germany, as well as disarmament.
In such talks, Eisenhower said, the United States “would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military purposes.” It was not enough “to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers. It must be put into the hands of those who will know how . . . to adapt it to the arts of peace.” Then, “this greatest of destructive forces can be developed into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind.”
Eisenhower thereupon made his specific proposal. The U.S., the U.K., and the U.S.S.R. should make joint contributions from their stockpiles of fissionable materials to an International Atomic Energy Agency. That agency would be set up under the aegis of the U.N. He recognized that initial contributions would be small, but “the proposal has the great virtue that it can be undertaken without the irritations and mutual suspicions incident to any attempt to set up a completely acceptable system of worldwide inspection and control.”
The proposed agency would draw on the talents of scientists from all over the world, who would study ways to use atomic energy for peaceful activities. “A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world. Thus the contributing powers would be dedicating some of their strength to serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind.” He outlined other advantages inherent in his proposal: a reduction in the world’s atomic stockpile dedicated to destruction; proof that the superpowers were “interested in human aspirations first”; and the opening of “a new channel of peaceful discussion.” He closed with a pledge: The United States was ready “to devote its entire heart and mind to find the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”29
Eisenhower had not been interrupted once by applause, and when he finished there was dead silence. Then the thirty-five hundred delegates began to cheer—even the Russians joined in—in an outburst of enthusiasm unprecedented in U.N. history. Outside the Communist countries, world reaction was overwhelmingly positive and even extravagant. Eisenhower appeared to have cut the Gordian knot. He had replaced fear with hope.
But the Russians stalled. They gave no immediate response, nor did they respond during the next year, or the next. Not until 1957 was an International Atomic Energy Agency created. By that time, the arms race had moved on to new levels and such an agency was irrelevant to current problems.
A great opportunity had been lost. Eisenhower’s proposal of Atoms for Peace was the most generous and the most serious offer on controlling the arms race ever made by an American President. All previous offers, and all that followed, contained clauses about on-site inspection that the Americans knew in advance were unacceptable to the Russians. But it was the strength of Eisenhower’s proposal, the measure of his genius, and the proof of his readiness to try something new to get out of the arms race that Atoms for Peace seemed to have a real chance of acceptance. It was not loaded against the Russians. Eisenhower believed that, to the contrary, the proposal had to be tempting to them. He hoped they would accept it and he thought that they would.
They did not. The Communists allowed their suspicions to override their judgment. They felt, evidently, that a reduction of their stockpile of fissionable matter would only widen the American lead. But Eisenhower had proposed contributions at a level of five American units to one Russian, and that was only a starting figure, open to negation. Still the Russians were not interested. They let the numbers frighten them. The United States might get two or three thousand bombs ahead of them.
Thus did the logic of the nuclear arms race take over. It was a logic unique to itself, with no connection to experience or reality. Everyone agreed that the sole purpose of making atomic weapons was to deter the enemy from aggression. All agreed that to deter you need only be in a position to threaten to destroy one major city. (Eisenhower once told this author, “There is nothing in the world that the Communists want badly enough to risk losing the Kremlin.”30) Why then build arsenals of thousands of bombs, when a few hundred would be more than enough to make the threat meaningful?
At this point the numbers game took over. Strategists and leaders on both sides were terrified at the thought of the other side getting too far ahead. Eisenhower and the Americans wanted—demanded—a clear American superiority. How they would use that lead—except to insure deterrence, which could be achieved with one hundred bombs anyway—they did not know. For their part, the Russians could not accept such a huge American advantage. They were determined to close the gap, if not catch up. Like the Americans, they did not know what they were going to do with all those bombs. They only knew they wanted them.
So they spurned Eisenhower’s proposed Atoms for Peace plan. It was a true tragedy. With only a bit of exaggeration, it can be said that Eisenhower’s proposal was the best chance mankind has had in the nuclear age to slow and redirect the arms race. Had the Russians put their own enthusiasm into it, it is possible to project an idyllic scenario: a generation of money, energy, and scientific skill going into peaceful uses for the atom, with both sides content to maintain but not add to their existing arsenals. To Eisenhower, the worst possible outcome, as he looked ahead in 1953, would have been a continuation of the numbers game, only by the 1980s at a level of tens of thousands of bombs, and with peaceful uses of atomic power generally unexploited, or—when in place—highly controversial and expensive. But that is exactly how it turned out.
Part of the blame is Eisenhower’s. He played the numbers game in nuclear weapons vigorously, although not so vigorously as all the JCS, nearly all Democrats, and most Republicans wanted him to. Atoms for Peace was his one great bid to get out of what he knew was a losing game. He had pride of authorship in the original idea, which added to his depression when the Russians stalled on the proposal. He thought his idea was worth a try, and the lack of Russian response made him harden his attitude toward the Soviet Union. He had been rebuffed on the major goal of his Presidency. His attempt to explore a new approach to arms control was never even tried. That was the sad result of Atoms for Peace.