EISENHOWER, on domestic politics, was neither reactionary nor reformer, but rather in the middle of the road. The result was a series of bland policies that angered the conservatives as well as the liberals but found support from a majority in Congress and the public. On health care, for example, Ike rejected Truman’s proposal for national health insurance and the American Medical Association’s position that there be no federal involvement in health whatsoever. Eisenhower asked for legislation that would provide federal support for the private health-insurance industry. He was opposed to a high tariff and managed to keep it down. He wanted private development of nuclear power plants, under a licensing system administered by the AEC, and he got it. On Labor Day 1954, at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, ground-breaking ceremonies marked the beginning of the first atomic power plant in America.
Eisenhower’s most significant legislative victory was Social Security. He had tried to expand the system in 1953, failed to get action, and repeated his request in 1954. With an election coming in November, Republicans were more amenable to improving rather than destroying the system, and Eisenhower got a bill that increased benefits and put ten million people not previously covered into Social Security. He also got the funds for American participation in the St. Lawrence Seaway and put through a tax-revision bill that did not lower rates but did increase deductions, thereby providing a tax cut of $7.4 billion for 1954. Thanks to reductions in defense expenditures, he was bringing the budget into balance despite the tax cut.
In the spring of 1954, the country went into a mild, post-Korea recession. Eisenhower was determined that the Republican Party shed the label of “party of depression,” and repeatedly warned his Cabinet and the Republican leaders that they could not afford to “get tagged like Mr. Hoover did, unjustly, of not doing anything to help in economic bad times.”1 Eisenhower spent an enormous amount of his time studying the state of the economy with his chief economics adviser, Dr. Arthur Burns, and with his associates. He was ready to move decisively in the event unemployment got much above 5 percent (it had been 2.9 percent in 1953, and peaked at 5.5 percent in 1954).
Fortunately for Eisenhower and the Republicans, the recession was short-lived. Whether the early recovery was due to the Administration’s policies, or to simple good luck based on the inherent strength of the economy, was unclear. In any event the Republicans had avoided a depression, and thereby laid to rest at least some of the fear, so widely held from 1929 onward, that a Republican Administration meant widespread unemployment and an uncaring government. In the economic field, Eisenhower was approaching or realizing his major goals—a balanced budget, no inflation, tax reduction, a growing GNP, and a low rate of unemployment.
• •
By no means were all the President’s relations with Congress happy ones. His attempt to undercut McCarthy by ignoring him had failed. McCarthy continued to dominate the headlines and the White House news conferences. Eisenhower was genuinely perplexed by this situation; insofar as he felt he could explain it, he laid the blame on the news media. He told Bill Robinson, “We have here a figure who owes his entire prominence and influence in today’s life to the publicity media of the nation,” and he complained that “now these same media are looking around for someone to knock off the creature of their own making.”2 He wanted the press to be a part of his team, working together for the good of the country, just as the press in the war had been on his side.
On a more realistic level, Eisenhower wanted the press to provide, at a minimum, accurate reporting. At the end of January, Ellis Slater came down to spend a weekend in the White House. On Sunday morning, the two men read the papers while eating breakfast. Slater recorded that Eisenhower “remarked that after twelve years in public life, during which he had been in a position to know the real stories back of the news, he had about come to believe it was virtually impossible for a news reporter to get any story exactly right.”3
A prime example was Secretary of the Army Robert T. Stevens’ “surrender” to McCarthy. The incident had its origins in McCarthy’s various investigations of Communist infiltration into the Army, which had led him to discover that a dentist, Dr. Irving Peress, who had been drafted, was a “Fifth Amendment Communist.” But although Peress had refused to sign a loyalty oath, or to answer McCarthy’s questions in a hearing, he had been promoted (the promotion was required by the doctors’ draft law) and then given an honorable discharge. McCarthy, furious, called the Camp Kilmer commanding officer, General Ralph Zwicker, to testify. Through most of February, McCarthy’s sole question of Zwicker—“Who promoted Peress?”—dominated the national news. Zwicker said he knew nothing about it. McCarthy browbeat Zwicker in the most abusive fashion, telling the general that he did not have “the brains of a five-year-old child” and that he was “not fit to wear” his uniform. Stevens then ordered Zwicker not to testify further. McCarthy thereupon ordered Stevens himself to appear before his committee. On February 24, Stevens had lunch with McCarthy in Everett Dirksen’s Senate office. McCarthy promised to stop abusing witnesses in return for Stevens’ promise to permit further testimony by Zwicker and to release “the names of everyone involved in the promotion and honorable discharge of Peress.”4
When Stevens emerged, McCarthy beside him, the reporters and photographers were waiting. McCarthy announced that Stevens had agreed that he and his subordinates would come back to the hearings. He neglected to add that he in turn had promised to act responsibly, and Stevens did not think to point this out to the press.
As the newspapers then broke the story, Eisenhower and his Administration had surrendered. The New York Times headlined its story, “Stevens Bows to McCarthy at Administration Behest. Will Yield Data on Peress.” Eisenhower, returning from a speaking trip to California, was “very mad and getting fed up.” Hagerty noted in his diary, “it’s his Army and he doesn’t like McCarthy’s tactics at all.” Eisenhower swore, “This guy McCarthy is going to get into trouble over this. I’m not going to take this one lying down . . . He’s ambitious. He wants to be President. He’s the last guy in the whole world who’ll ever get there, if I have anything to say.”5
Behind the scenes, Eisenhower was meeting with Dirksen and Senator Karl Mundt, extracting from them promises to make Joe behave. But his more significant act was a telephone call he placed to Brownell. His subject was the power of a committee of Congress to subpoena. “I suppose the President can refuse to comply,” Eisenhower said, “but when it comes down to people down the line appointed to office, I don’t know what the answer is. I would like to have a brief memo on precedent, etc.—just what I can do in this regard.”6 Eisenhower thereupon prepared the foundation for what would be his sole significant action against McCarthy, denial of access to executive personnel and records.
On March 3, Eisenhower had a prepared statement for his news conference. He said that the Army had made “serious errors” in the Peress case, that it was correcting its procedures, and that he had complete confidence in Stevens. He then read some homilies about McCarthyism (“In opposing Communism, we are defeating ourselves if we use methods that do not conform to the American sense of justice”), about the Army (it was “completely loyal and dedicated”), and about Congress (which had a responsibility “to see to it that its procedures are proper and fair”). After asserting his own “vigilance against any kind of internal subversion,” Eisenhower ended curtly: “and that is my last word on any subject even closely related to that particular matter.”7
McCarthy answered within the hour. He declared defiantly that “if a stupid, arrogant, or witless man in a position of power appears before our committee and is found aiding the Communist Party, he will be exposed. The fact that he might be a general places him in no special class as far as I am concerned.” Then, in a classic McCarthyism, delivered by the master himself, McCarthy said, “apparently the President and I now agree on the necessity of getting rid of Communists.” To make sure his followers got the point, he publicly deleted the “now” a half hour later.8
Still Eisenhower held back from any direct attack against McCarthy. He continued to urge the Republican senatorial leaders, especially Knowland, Dirksen, and Mundt, to keep the Army-McCarthy hearings (which were about to begin) orderly and fair. He told his Cabinet, in a formal memorandum, that “each superior, including me, must remember the obligations he has to his subordinates. These comprise . . . the protection of those subordinates, through all legal and proper means available, against attacks of a character under which they otherwise might be helpless.”9 Beyond that, he would not go. His belief was that McCarthyism was based on fear, and that the fear would subside, and McCarthy would lose his power and influence as the nation concentrated its interest on matters of substance.
Much of Eisenhower’s incoming mail was telling him that McCarthy “has it within his power to destroy our system of government.” He scoffed at the notion: “When the proposition is stated as baldly as this, then it becomes instantly ridiculous.” He also scoffed at Adlai Stevenson’s charge, “that the Republican Party was one-half Eisenhower and one-half McCarthy.” When asked at a news conference to comment, Eisenhower replied “At the risk of appearing egotistical, I say ‘nonsense.’ ”10
Thus Eisenhower decided, again, that McCarthy was not so great a threat to the nation or to the party as so many feared. But the forces McCarthy represented, and the methods he used, were another matter. “There is a certain reactionary fringe of the Republican Party that hates and despises everything for which I stand,” he told Robinson. He thought if the Republican leaders had done their job, McCarthy would have long since been relegated to his proper sphere. Knowland, especially, had let him down; Eisenhower wrote of the majority leader in the Senate, “It is a pity that his wisdom, his judgment, his tact, and his sense of humor lag so far behind his ambition.” As to McCarthy’s methods, Eisenhower said, “I despise them.”11
Nevertheless, he thought that his many close friends who were urging him to publicly label McCarthy with derogatory titles were badly mistaken. It would make “the Presidency ridiculous and in the long run make the citizens of our country very unhappy indeed.” Instead of speaking out, he would stick to his lifelong principle, so often stated so vehemently: “To avoid public mention of any name unless it can be done with favorable intent and connotation; reserve all criticism for the private conference; speak only good in public.” 12
Sound principle, but there were other principles Eisenhower also held, one of which was loyalty. He was, after all, not only the Commander in Chief but also the former Chief of Staff of an Army that McCarthy was viciously attacking. He was also the Supreme Commander of 1944; under his orders, General Zwicker, a West Pointer, had gone ashore on D-Day as chief of staff for the 2d Division, been wounded, and won a decoration. Since the war, Zwicker had had a distinguished career. Now Eisenhower was standing aside while McCarthy told Zwicker that he was not fit to wear the uniform. One might have thought that such assaults on such targets would have brought Eisenhower charging into the action. He himself had said (of the Republican senatorial leaders), “They do not seem to realize when there arrives that moment at which soft speaking should be abandoned and a fight to the end undertaken. Any man who hopes to exercise leadership must be ready to meet this requirement face to face when it arises; unless he is ready to fight when necessary, people will finally begin to ignore him.”13 But despite McCarthy’s extreme provocations, Eisenhower was not ready to abandon soft speaking.
The next storm broke when McCarthy announced that he would hold his seat as a voting member of the committee, despite the fact that he was on trial as much as the Army was (the Army charged that Roy Cohn, counsel to McCarthy’s subcommittee, had used his position to exert pressure for special favors for G. David Schine, Cohn’s former associate, who had been drafted). At a news-conference briefing, Eisenhower’s aides were split on how to respond. Jerry Persons, always the most conservative of the advisers, wanted the President to say that McCarthy’s vote was a matter for the Senate to decide. Hagerty, Cutler, and others said that the President was the moral leader of the nation and that if he did not speak out he would “get murdered on this one.” Eisenhower stopped their arguing by announcing, “Look, I know exactly what I am going to say. I’m going to say he [McCarthy] can’t sit as a judge. I’ve made up my mind you can’t do business with Joe and to hell with any attempt to compromise.”14
At his news conference, he was not quite so tough. “I am perfectly ready to put myself on record flatly,” he said, “that in America, if a man is a party to a dispute, directly or indirectly, he does not sit in judgment on his own case, and I don’t believe that any leadership can escape responsibility for carrying on that tradition.”15 No one could disagree with that statement, and so McCarthy was considered “spanked,” and he abandoned his demand to have a vote, although he did retain his right to cross-examine witnesses. And, of course, the right to subpoena.
It was this last point that had Eisenhower worried. He did not want McCarthy running rampage, demanding that personnel from the Executive Branch appear before him, and that they produce records. McCarthyism was the result of fear, the President had insisted, but he was reluctant to admit that he also was afraid. He feared that McCarthy would get into the records or haul government officials before him. On March 29, he again asked Brownell to prepare a statement that he could use in the event that he had to order his subordinates not to appear before McCarthy.
What Eisenhower feared specifically was the Oppenheimer case. Eisenhower’s withholding of Oppenheimer’s top-secret clearance, pending investigation, had been done secretly, but inevitably word was getting out. What bothered Eisenhower most was that McCarthy had just charged that the H-bomb development had been held up for eighteen months “because of Reds in the government.” Joe’s statement was getting uncomfortably close to Oppenheimer.
“We have to move fast,” Hagerty noted, “before McCarthy breaks the Oppenheimer investigation and it then becomes our scandal.” Hagerty worried about the public-relations aspects: “It’s just a question of time before someone cracks it wide open and everything hits the fan—if this breaks it will be the biggest news we’ve had down here yet—real hot.” 16 Eisenhower worried about something much bigger than public relations; his concern was the morale of the nation’s scientists and the state of the nation’s defenses.
The seriousness Eisenhower assigned to keeping McCarthy out of the Oppenheimer case was best illustrated by the fact that the President spent most of three full days, April 9 through 11, on the Oppenheimer matter. Strauss gave the President information that made it clear Oppenheimer had indeed tried to delay the H-bomb project. Eisenhower was not particularly concerned about the politics of Oppenheimer’s wife, or those of his brother and sister-in-law, or even about Oppenheimer’s having lied, under oath, about his associations. Eisenhower respected the man for his accomplishments, thought that such a unique genius should be given maximum leeway for idiosyncrasies, even in politics, and had been impressed by the moral arguments Oppenheimer had made against the H-bomb.
What Eisenhower found inexcusable was that once Truman had made the decision to go ahead with the H-bomb, Oppenheimer did not get on the team. Worse, he tried to slow down the project. Eisenhower wanted him removed from all contact with the AEC, because he did not want to give Oppenheimer the opportunity to spread moral doubts in the minds of the scientists. Oppenheimer’s removal from the AEC had to be done carefully, however, because of his unique stature and prestige among his fellow scientists, men on whom the fate of the nuclear arms race rested. Eisenhower also did not want to let McCarthy give the country the impression that all scientists were disloyal. “We’ve got to handle this so that all our scientists are not made out to be Reds,” Eisenhower told Hagerty. “That goddamn McCarthy is just likely to try such a thing.”17
Adding to the difficulties, as Hagerty noted, was that “McCarthy knows about case and it was Nixon who talked him out of using it earlier because of security reasons.” And Hagerty realized, as did Eisenhower, that McCarthy, “with back to wall, could easily try to get out from under by splashing Oppenheimer.”18
So Eisenhower decided to back off, or rather to stay backed off, from McCarthy. He would not push the senator, but allowed events to run their course, including ignoring McCarthy’s gross insults to Zwicker, hoping that McCarthy would not get so far back against the wall that he opened an Oppenheimer investigation. When Eisenhower was asked at a news conference about McCarthy’s charge of an eighteen-month delay in the H-bomb, he denied any knowledge of it at all. “I never heard of any delay on my part, never heard of it.” Even in his memoirs, written after the accusation had been made that Oppenheimer had been removed from the AEC because of his opposition to the H-bomb, Eisenhower said, “Certainly I . . . gave no weight to this fact.”
Also in his memoirs, Eisenhower said his main concern about the Army-McCarthy hearings was that they be done “with minimum publicity and maximum dispatch.”19 He certainly failed in that goal. But his real aim was to keep McCarthy away from Oppenheimer, and to avoid a debate among scientists about the morality of working for the government on the H-bomb. In this goal he succeeded brilliantly.
The hearings began on April 22 and dragged on for two months. They were on national TV and attracted a huge and fascinated audience. McCarthy got maximum publicity with minimum dispatch—indeed, too much publicity. The senator had put himself into an impossible position. He could only destroy himself before the biggest audience of his career. Eisenhower watched the spectacle on TV as fascinated and appalled as everyone else. “The McCarthy-Army argument, and its reporting, are close to disgusting,” he told Swede Hazlett. “It saddens me that I must feel ashamed for the United States Senate.”20 As the spring wore on, he was content to watch McCarthy hang himself, and quite pleased that the subject of the H-bomb never came up in the hearings.
• •
The H-bomb was very much at the center of the President’s attention. On March 1, the AEC had detonated a multimegaton nuclear device on Bikini Island. Code named Bravo, the blast was the first in a series called Castle. Eisenhower had given his approval to Castle after being told by Strauss that it was probable that the Russians were ahead in H-bomb technology. The device the AEC had set off in November 1952 had not been small enough to carry in an airplane, while the Russians seemed to have accomplished that goal in their test. American scientists needed to increase their efforts, which was one reason Eisenhower was so concerned about the Oppenheimer case breaking just as the United States prepared to start Castle.
Eisenhower wanted to keep the tests themselves secret too, but it proved impossible to hide them. Among other problems, a Japanese fishing boat had been showered with radiation, the crew fell ill, and the Japanese government and people raised a roar of protest. On March 24, at a news conference, Eisenhower decided he had to respond to persistent questions about radiation, even though he had promised Hagerty he would tell reporters to wait for Strauss’ return from the Pacific testing grounds. Eisenhower told the press, “It is quite clear that this time something must have happened that we have never experienced before, and must have surprised and astonished the scientists. Very properly, the United States has to take precautions that never occurred to them before.”21
The President’s admission allowed the reporters to speculate that the H-bomb testing had gotten out of hand, that the blast was uncontrollable. Then on March 30 the AEC, no longer attempting to hide the basic testing, announced that a second H-bomb had been tested that morning. That led to more concerned headlines. Meanwhile, Strauss had returned to Washington, and on March 31 Eisenhower took him to his news conference. Eisenhower had told Strauss to read a prepared statement “setting at ease fears that bombs had gotten out of control,” then answer questions about Bravo, and finally try to relieve people’s worries.
Strauss told the press that Bravo was never out of control, that the main problem had been a shift in wind that blew the radioactive material over the Japanese fishing boat, that there was no truth to stories about contaminated tuna fish or about radioactive currents moving on Japan, and that overall the fallout danger was being greatly exaggerated. The radioactivity would disappear quickly, but the military gains for the United States would be enduring. He said that the nation should “rejoice” that the tests had been so successful and that “enormous potential has been added to our military posture by what we have learned.”
That piqued the reporters’ curiosity, and one of them asked how big an H-bomb might be made. Strauss replied, “It can be made to be as large as you wish, as large as the military requirement demands, that is to say, an H-bomb can be made as—large enough to take out a city.” Cries of “What?” went up around the room. “How big a city?” “Any city,” Strauss replied. “Any city, New York?” “The metropolitan area, yes.”22
On the way back to the Oval Office, Eisenhower told Strauss, “Lewis, I wouldn’t have answered that one that way.” Instead, the President said, Strauss should have told the reporters to “wait for the movie.” He was referring to a movie the AEC had made on Bravo. Eisenhower said he wanted the truth told—“Hell, I’d let everyone see the movie,” he told Hagerty. “That’s the purpose of it, to let everyone in.” But then he let Strauss change his mind and decided not to release the movie, for fear of frightening people even further.23
The Oppenheimer case, meanwhile, became public knowledge when the committee Eisenhower had charged with investigating Oppenheimer reported, by two to one, that while Oppenheimer was not disloyal, he had “fundamental defects of character” and therefore recommended that his security clearance be taken away. (By a vote of 4 to 1, with Strauss leading the way, the AEC later upheld that decision.) The announcement of the committee recommendation met Hagerty’s objective of beating McCarthy to the headlines on Oppenheimer, but it also set off the split that Eisenhower had feared in the American scientific community. The ensuing uproar also met Eisenhower’s objective of keeping the development of the H-bomb out of the debate. The ugly charge of anti-Semitism was hurled about, and Oppenheimer’s supporters said that Eisenhower had done it only to appease McCarthy. Eisenhower was careful to point out that he was not punishing Oppenheimer in any way, nor finding him guilty of anything, merely separating him from the AEC. He was not even averse to having Oppenheimer work for the government, if the project was safe enough. “Why do we not get Dr. Oppenheimer interested in desalting sea water?” Eisenhower wrote to Strauss.24 And in a press conference, he was ready to praise Oppenheimer, albeit in a rather muddled way: “I have known Dr. Oppenheimer and, like others, I have certainly admired and respected his very great professional and technical attainments; and this is something that is the kind of thing that must be gone through with what I believe is best not talked about too much until we know whatever answers there may be.”25 And with that, and with the end of the Castle series, and with the Army-McCarthy hearings reaching their height, the public interest in Bravo and its implications faded.
Throughout the period of Castle and the announcement about lifting Oppenheimer’s security clearance, Eisenhower complained about the way in which the Army-McCarthy hearings were detracting public attention from the real issues. But he was the chief beneficiary. He wanted Bravo and Oppenheimer kept as quiet as possible, and McCarthy diverted enough attention so that few noticed, in the spring of 1954, that Eisenhower had launched the United States into an H-Bomb race with the Soviets, including a race to build intercontinental missiles. Eisenhower had made momentous decisions about this most critical of issues, and had done so with a minimum of public debate. He had even managed to keep Oppenheimer’s dismissal from raising the question of the morality of building the H-bomb.
• •
Eisenhower, depressed by the failure of the Russians to respond to Atoms for Peace, was fully committed to the H-bomb. It had become the centerpiece of his strategy, and of his defense policy. It had allowed him to cut spending while increasing America’s nuclear lead. It made possible the “New Look,” as Wilson’s Pentagon public-relations people called it—fewer conventional forces, more atomic firepower, less cost.
The basic structure of the New Look was an expanded strategic air force and a much-reduced conventional force on land and at sea. It depended upon a huge American lead in nuclear weapons. Critics, led by Army Chief of Staff Matthew Ridgway, charged that it was unbalanced and thereby forced America into an “all or nothing” posture. Ridgway was right, of course, as Dulles made clear in a mid-January speech, when he announced that Eisenhower and the NSC had made a “basic decision” that in the future the United States would confront any possible aggression by “a great capacity to retaliate instantly by means and places of our own choosing.” Eisenhower, asked to comment, said that Dulles “was merely stating what, to my mind, is a fundamental truth and really doesn’t take much decision; it is just a fundamental truth.”26
But that only deepened and did not elucidate the mystery. If American policy was to retaliate instantly and massively against Soviet aggression, what happened to the congressional power to declare war? In March, Dulles explained: “If the Russians attacked one of America’s allies, there was no need for the President to go to Congress for a declaration of war.” Congress was unhappy with that response; so were the reporters. Through the spring, they pressed Eisenhower for clarification.
He explained that “there is a difference between an act of war and declaring war.” If he was faced with a Soviet assault against the United States, “a gigantic Pearl Harbor,” he would act instantaneously, but he would also assemble Congress as fast as possible, because “after all, you can’t carry on a war without Congress.” As to the precise legal and constitutional question, Eisenhower admitted, “I could be mistaken, and I would not argue it.” In a sentence that said volumes about the Eisenhower-Dulles relationship, the President added, “I would like to discuss it with Foster Dulles, but having talked to him, I am sure that we are absolutely in agreement as to what we mean about it.”
The point was that the reporters wanted to know what he meant by “it.” Did it mean that if there was a war in Korea or that Americans decided to support the French in Vietnam, nuclear weapons would be delivered against Moscow or Peiping? “No war ever shows the characteristics that were expected,” Eisenhower replied. “It is always different.” Avoiding the question of how massive retaliation could work in a small war far outside Russian or Chinese borders, Eisenhower returned to the Pearl Harbor theme, again warning that in the age of nuclear weapons a surprise attack could be horrendous. Under those circumstances, if the President did not act immediately, he “should be worse than impeached, he should be hanged.”27
• •
The war raging in Vietnam made the subject of massive retaliation more than academic. The French were holding their own, but barely. Paris was weary of war. The cost, in lives and money, had become unendurable. For the Americans, too, the situation was intolerable. A continued stalemate would drain French resources to such an extent that France would never be able to meet its NATO obligations, always a prime consideration with Eisenhower. Further, the French were demanding more American money, and even American planes and troops, and they were simultaneously using EDC, which Eisenhower very much wanted, to blackmail the United States. Without support in Indochina, the French were saying, they could not ratify EDC.
A French defeat in Vietnam would be worse than continued stalemate. There was first of all global strategic balance to consider. There was in addition the political position of the Republican Party to be considered. A major theme of Eisenhower’s campaign had been a rejection of containment and an adoption of a policy of liberation. Now the Republicans had been in power for more than a year. They had failed to liberate any Communist slave anywhere. In Korea they had accepted an armistice that left North Korea in Communist hands. Eisenhower was keenly aware that by far his most popular act had been to achieve peace in Korea, but he was just as aware that Republican orators had been demanding to know, ever since 1949, “Who lost China?” Could he afford to allow Democrats to ask, “Who lost Vietnam?” He told his Cabinet he could not.
The obvious way out of the quandary was a French victory, but the problem was how to achieve it without introducing American planes and troops. Under no circumstances was Eisenhower going to send American troops back onto the Asian mainland less than a year after signing an armistice in Korea. Even had he wanted to do that, the New Look precluded such an effort—the troops simply were not available.
Eisenhower did increase direct American military assistance to the French. How much of the war the Americans were paying for at this time is impossible to say because the figures were hidden in so many different ways, but the general estimate is around 75 percent. The French now wanted twenty-five bombers and four hundred Air Force personnel to service them; Eisenhower gave them ten bombers and two hundred people.
On February 8, at a meeting of Republican leaders, Senator Leverett Saltonstall anxiously raised the question about American servicemen going to Indochina. Was yet another President, this one a Republican, going to take the country into yet another war by the back door? That was Saltonstall’s implied question, and Eisenhower took it seriously. He carefully explained his reason for giving U.S. Air Force weapons to the French to be used against the Vietminh, and assured Saltonstall that none of the personnel would be in a combat zone. Eisenhower admitted that he was “frightened about getting ground forces tied up in Indochina,” and promised that he would pull all two hundred men out of the area on June 15.28
Still, for all Eisenhower’s emphasis on reduced numbers and a definite date for withdrawal, he had sent the first American military personnel to Vietnam. Of course, as Eisenhower insisted, it was hardly an irrevocable step. But still, it had been taken. He was worried about what it might lead to. Earlier, in January, he had told the NSC (in the words of the stenographer), “For himself, said the President with great force, he simply could not imagine the United States putting ground forces anywhere in Southeast Asia, except possibly in Malaya, which we have to defend as a bulwark to our offshore island chain. But to do this anywhere else, said the President with vehemence, how bitterly opposed I am to such a course of action. This war in Indochina would absorb our troops by divisions!”29
Long before the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964, Eisenhower was even more emphatic and prophetic about an American ground involvement in Vietnam. When writing his presidential memoirs, in 1963, he declared, “The jungles of Indochina . . . would have swallowed up division after division of United States troops, who, unaccustomed to this kind of warfare, would have sustained heavy casualties. . . . Furthermore, the presence of ever more numbers of white men in uniform probably would have aggravated rather than assuaged Asiatic resentments.”30 (When he published the memoirs, nearly a year later, he deleted that passage, because by then the country was getting involved in Vietnam and he did not want to be critical of the President.) Nevertheless, throughout the long period in 1954 of the French agony at Dien Bien Phu a grim specter dominated his thinking.
In mid-March, the upbeat reports from Vietnam suddenly reversed. Allen Dulles said the French now felt they had only a 50-50 chance at Dien Bien Phu. Furthermore, French Premier René Pleven told Ambassador to France Douglas Dillon that “there was no longer the prospect of a satisfactory military solution.”31
On March 23 French Army Chief of Staff Paul Ely came to Washington to discuss increasing the flow of American material. Eisenhower and Dulles had a series of meetings with Ely. He wanted additional American aircraft, while Eisenhower pressed him on the status of granting independence. Finally, Eisenhower agreed to furnish the French with some C-119 Flying Boxcars that could drop napalm, “which would burn out a considerable area and help to reveal enemy artillery positions.” But Eisenhower would not commit the United States to any military policy of direct intervention until he “got a lot of answers” from Paris on outstanding issues, primarily EDC and Indochinese independence.32
Then Eisenhower set about building the support he would need to withstand the strident demands for intervention that he knew would come when Dien Bien Phu fell. He did so by putting conditions on American involvement. They were deliberately created to be impossible of fulfillment, and there were a number of them. First, a full and clear grant of independence by the French. Second, British participation in any venture. Third, at least some of the nations of Southeast Asia had to be involved. Fourth, Congress had to give full and clear prior approval. Fifth, he would want the French to turn the war over to the Americans, but keep their troops in combat. Sixth, the French had to prove that they were not just asking the Americans to cover a fighting withdrawal.
Eisenhower’s conditions, impossible as they were, seemed to him to be based on principles that could not be broken. As Dulles told Ely point-blank, the United States could “not afford to send its flag and its own military establishment and thus to engage the prestige of the United States,” unless it expected to win. Eisenhower expressed for himself another basic principle, when in an unpublished portion of his memoirs he wrote that “the strongest reason of all for the United States [to stay out] is the fact that among all the powerful nations of the world the United States is the only one with a tradition of anti-colonialism. . . . The standing of the United States as the most powerful of the anti-colonial powers is an asset of incalculable value to the Free World . . . The moral position of the United States was more to be guarded than the Tonkin Delta, indeed than all of Indochina.”33
So Eisenhower refused to go very far in meeting Ely’s demands. The French general went to Radford, who was much more forthcoming. Together they approved joint U.S.-French plans, made in Saigon, for Operation Vulture, an air strike against the Vietminh around Dien Bien Phu. Ely’s hope, and Radford’s, was that as the end drew near at Dien Bien Phu, Eisenhower could not resist the pressure to intervene. Indeed, some of Eisenhower’s aides thought that the French were deliberately losing at Dien Bien Phu in order to force an American intervention.
On the morning of April 5, Dulles called Eisenhower to inform him that the French had told Ambassador Dillon that their impression was that Operation Vulture had been agreed to, and hinted that they expected two or three atomic bombs to be used against the Vietminh. Eisenhower told Dulles to tell the French, through Dillon, that they must have misunderstood Radford. Eisenhower said that “such a move is impossible,” that without congressional support an air strike would be “completely unconstitutional and indefensible.” He told Dulles to “take a look to see if anything else can be done,” then again warned, “We cannot engage in active war.”34
So Eisenhower had rejected intervention. But he had not decided to leave Southeast Asia to its own devices. He very definitely wanted to form a regional grouping that could draw a line and thus institute a policy of containment. As Truman had done in Europe in the late forties, Eisenhower would seal off the Communists in Southeast Asia. To achieve that goal, he first of all had to convince Congress, the American people, and the potential allies that Indochina was worth the effort. After all, if the Americans were not ready to fight beside the French, why should they, or anyone else, be prepared to fight for whatever was left of a non-Communist Indochina?
At his April 7 news conference, Eisenhower made his most important—and his most famous—declaration on Indochina. Robert Richards of Copley Press asked him to comment on the strategic importance of Indochina to the free world. Eisenhower replied that first of all, “You have the specific value of a locality in its production of materials that the world needs.” Second, “You have the possibility that many human beings pass under a dictatorship that is inimical to the free world.” Finally, “You have the broader considerations that might follow what you would call the ‘falling domino’ principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.” He thought that the “sequence of events,” if the United States abandoned Southeast Asia altogether, would be the loss of all of Indochina, then Burma, then Thailand, then Malaya, then Indonesia. “Now you begin to talk about areas that not only multiply the disadvantages that you would suffer through loss of materials, sources of materials, but now you are talking really about millions and millions of people.” Even worse, the loss of Southeast Asia would be followed by the probable loss of Japan, Formosa, and the Philippines, which would then threaten Australia and New Zealand.35
By April 23, the situation at Dien Bien Phu had become desperate. Dulles sent a series of alarming cables to Eisenhower. “France is almost visibly collapsing under our eyes,” the Secretary declared. He deplored the worldwide publicity being given to Dien Bien Phu, because “it seems to me that Dien Bien Phu has become a symbol out of all proportion to its military importance.” Dulles insisted that there was “no military or logical reason why loss of Dien Bien Phu should lead to collapse of French will, in relation both to Indochina and EDC.” In another cable, Dulles said the French insisted there were only two alternatives; Operation Vulture or a request for cease-fire. (There was great confusion about Vulture; Radford, Ely, and Nixon all believed it involved three atomic bombs, while Dulles thought it would be a “massive B-29 bombing” by U.S. planes using conventional bombs.)36
Eisenhower wrote a long, thoughtful letter to Al Gruenther, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR), whom he depended upon as his most reliable link to the French leadership. After repeating once again that unilateral American intervention was out of the question (“it would lay us open to the charge of imperialism and colonialism or—at the very least—of objectionable paternalism”), Eisenhower complained that “ever since 1945 France has been unable to decide whether she most fears Russia or Germany. As a consequence, her policies in Europe have been nothing but confusion; starts and stops; advances and retreats!” Eisenhower said of Dien Bien Phu, “This spectacle has been saddening indeed. It seems incredible that a nation which had only the help of a tiny British Army when it turned back the German flood in 1914 and withstood the gigantic 1916 attacks at Verdun could now be reduced to the point that she cannot produce a few hundred technicians to keep planes flying properly in Indochina.” Eisenhower thought the French problem was one of leadership and spirit. “The only hope is to produce a new and inspirational leader—and I do not mean one that is 6 feet 5 and who considers himself to be, by some miraculous biological and transmigrative process, the offspring of Clemenceau and Jeanne d’Arc.”
Then Eisenhower turned serious, ticking off points he wanted Gruenther to make to the French. The loss of Dien Bien Phu did not mean the loss of the war. Eisenhower wanted the French Army to remain in Vietnam and promised that “additional ground forces should come from Asiatic and European troops already in the region” (that is, there would be no American troops but America would pay the bills). The French should grant independence. The ultimate goal, Eisenhower told the SACEUR to pass on to the French, was to create a “concert of nations” in Southeast Asia on the NATO model.37
This was Eisenhower’s first direct mention of the idea of a Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), and it was significant that he made it to the SACEUR. He thought first of NATO. His own vehement anti-Communism certainly played the major role in his Vietnam policy, tempered of course by his realism, but his anxieties about the French were also important considerations. He felt the French had to be dealt with like children. He had to support Pleven, now reportedly his only hope for getting EDC ratified by the French. And if EDC failed, German rearmament would be even more difficult to achieve. And without German rearmament, NATO would continue to be a hollow shell. In some part, then, SEATO came about because of the needs of NATO.
On May 1, Cutler brought the President a draft of an NSC paper that was exploring the possibilities of using atomic bombs in Vietnam. Eisenhower told Cutler, “I certainly do not think that the atom bomb can be used by the United States unilaterally.” He went on, “You boys must be crazy. We can’t use those awful things against Asians for the second time in less than ten years. My God.”38
On May 7, Dien Bien Phu surrendered. Eisenhower tried to keep up the pretense that the French had lost only a battle, not the war. He told the NSC of his “firm belief that two, and only two, developments would really save the situation in French Indochina.” First, Paris had to grant independence; second, the French needed to appoint a better general to take charge of the campaign. The French could still win, but time was running out. Cutler then joined Nixon and Stassen in again urging a unilateral American intervention. Eisenhower ignored them.39
So Eisenhower’s policy was set: to accept partition, although only after obstructing and delaying the process as long as possible, and then to create SEATO. He had managed to avoid involvement in the war, but he was determined to make as firm a commitment to the non-Communist remainder of Southeast Asia as America had made to the NATO countries.
Of all Eisenhower’s reasons for staying out of Vietnam, the one that meant most to him was the potential effect of intervention on the American people. The Korean War had been divisive enough; Eisenhower shuddered to think of the consequences of getting into a war to fight for a French colony less than a year after the armistice in Korea. That was the reason for his stress on prior congressional approval; if he could get it, he would be leading a united nation. But he doubted that he could get it, precisely because the nation was badly divided.
Eisenhower’s decision to stay out of Vietnam did not have the dramatic quality to it that his 1944 D-Day decision had, because it was made over a longer period of time. Nevertheless, it was as decisive, in its way, because in both cases what happened next depended solely upon his word. At any time in the last weeks of Dien Bien Phu he could have ordered an air strike, either atomic or conventional. Many of his senior advisers wanted him to do just that, including his chairman of the JCS, his Vice-President, his head of the NSC planning staff, his MSA adviser, and (sometimes) his Secretary of State. Eisenhower said no, decisively. He had looked at the military options, with his professional eye, and pronounced them unsatisfactory. On June 5, 1944, they had been satisfactory, and he said go; in April 1954, they were unsatisfactory, and he said don’t go.
From that moment on, Eisenhower supporters could claim, “He got us out of Korea and he kept us out of Vietnam.”
• •
In his memoirs, Eisenhower complained that the day Dien Bien Phu fell, the banner headlines covered not that event but rather McCarthy’s demand for a test of Eisenhower’s right to use executive privilege to bar secret data to congressional investigators. Ten years later, Eisenhower said, it was plain to see that the action in Vietnam was far more important than McCarthy, who “ceased to command public attention shortly after that day in history.”40 What Eisenhower could not know was that almost exactly twenty years later the precedent of executive privilege he created would be used by Nixon in his response to Watergate. In May 1974 it would not have been quite so self-evident that the headline writers had put the wrong story on top back in 1954.
Eisenhower took McCarthy’s demand far more seriously than he implied in his memoirs. In March, he had asked the Attorney General if the President could order federal personnel not to appear before McCarthy on the grounds that they were being abused. The reply was that there was no such precedent. On May 3 and 5, Eisenhower asked for further briefs on his power to withhold confidential information from Congress.
What bothered Eisenhower was how far down he could extend the blank wall. On May 11, Wilson called him to report that the McCarthy committee had demanded the names of all Army personnel who had any connection with the Peress case. Wilson said that Ridgway “violently objected” to this, and asked Eisenhower what to do. Eisenhower said that in this case the Army had better give in to avoid the appearance of a “cover-up.”41
Two days later, McCarthy was threatening to subpoena White House personnel. Eisenhower began to feel the pressure. In a conference with Adams and Hagerty, Eisenhower said it might be necessary to send one man from the White House, probably Adams, before the committee. He should give his name, and title, and then refuse to answer all questions under presidential order.
The following day, May 14, Eisenhower told Hagerty that he was not even going to send Adams. “Congress has absolutely no right to ask them to testify in any way, shape, or form about the advice that they were giving to me at any time on any subject.” Eisenhower was angrier than he had ever been with McCarthy, because McCarthy had now pushed him to the point where he had to act. His response to McCarthy’s demands had become the central issue. With Adams, Lodge, and the others before his committee, McCarthy could have a field day. It made Eisenhower shudder to think what McCarthy might bring up. Worst of all would be Oppenheimer.
What was at stake, as Eisenhower saw it, was the modern Presidency. Previous Presidents had been exceedingly reluctant to withhold information or witnesses from Congress, and Brownell was never able to find any convincing precedent for a doctrine of executive privilege. What Eisenhower felt so keenly was the need for such a doctrine for a President in the nuclear age. The reason there were no precedents was precisely because the situation was unprecedented. There were so many things Eisenhower felt he had to keep secret, like Oppenheimer, the H-bomb tests, the CIA’s covert activities, and a host of others, that he was willing to vastly expand the powers of the Presidency to do it. He told Hagerty, “If they want to make a test of this principle, I’ll fight them tooth and nail and up and down the country. It is a matter of principle with me and I will never permit it.”42
On May 17, at a leaders’ meeting, Eisenhower said that “any man who testifies as to the advice he gave me won’t be working for me that night. I will not allow people around me to be subpoenaed and you might just as well know it now.” Knowland protested that it would be a terrible thing if Eisenhower challenged Congress’ right to subpoena. Eisenhower repeated that “my people are not going to be subpoenaed.”43
That afternoon, Eisenhower released a letter to Wilson, directing Wilson to withhold information from the committee. The President put his case in sweeping terms: “It is essential to efficient and effective administration that employees of the Executive Branch be in a position to be completely candid in advising with each other on official matters.” Therefore “it is not in the public interest that any of their conversations or communications, or any documents or reproductions, concerning such advice be disclosed.”44 This was the most absolute assertion of presidential right to withhold information from Congress ever uttered to that day in American history. Earlier Presidents had held that their conversations in Cabinet meetings were privileged and confidential, but none had ever dared extend this privilege to everybody in the Executive Branch. Congress was upset, Republicans and Democrats alike.
McCarthy was livid. His real source of power was the power to subpoena, and he knew at once that his whole career was at stake. He therefore made a public appeal to federal employees to disregard Eisenhower’s orders and report directly to him on “graft, corruption, Communism, and treason.” Eisenhower took up the challenge. When Hagerty discussed McCarthy’s appeal with Eisenhower, the red-faced President damned “the complete arrogance of McCarthy.” Pacing around the room, speaking in rapid-fire order, Eisenhower said, “This amounts to nothing but a wholesale subversion of public service . . . McCarthy is deliberately trying to subvert the people we have in government. I think this is the most disloyal act we have ever had by anyone in the government of the United States.”
Eisenhower told Hagerty to make sure the subject came up at his next press conference, so that he would have the opportunity to tell the reporters “that in my opinion this is the most arrogant invitation to subversion and disloyalty that I have ever heard of. I won’t stand for it for one minute.”45 But between the time of that discussion and the press conference, Eisenhower spent another afternoon on the Oppenheimer case. He was beginning to think that the case was even worse than he had feared, that Oppenheimer really was a Communist, and really had significantly held back H-bomb development. But whatever the facts, Eisenhower remained determined to avoid a public debate on Oppenheimer, with its probable demoralizing effect on the atomic scientists. So he did not want to push McCarthy too far against the wall. He did not deliver the rough treatment that he had promised to give McCarthy at the press conference; instead he refused to answer any questions on the subject. He simply held to his order on executive privilege.
The Army-McCarthy hearings droned on to their doleful conclusion. On June 18, the day after they ended, Eisenhower called Army counsel Joseph Welch to the Oval Office, where he congratulated Welch on his prosecution of the Army’s case. Welch said that the only good thing to come out of the hearings was that they had given the nation an opportunity to see McCarthy in action. Eisenhower agreed.
And that indeed was the effective end of McCarthy. He still retained considerable strength in the polls, he still had his committee chairmanship, but he no longer had the power to frighten. The Army-McCarthy hearings had degenerated to ridiculous points of trivia, primarily because Eisenhower denied to the committee access to people and records that could have provided McCarthy with sensational disclosures. But with nothing substantial to go after, McCarthy was reduced to ranting and raving (and increasingly heavy drinking), which cost him his credibility. It was not the things Eisenhower did behind the scenes but rather his most public act, the assertion of the right of executive privilege, that was his major contribution to McCarthy’s downfall. At the time, few noticed and fewer commented on Eisenhower’s boldness in establishing executive privilege, which quickly came to be regarded as traditional.
• •
In the spring of 1954, the Supreme Court was scheduled to make its pronouncement in the school segregation cases. Brownell told Eisenhower that he thought the Court wanted to delay making a ruling as long as possible. Eisenhower laughingly replied that he hoped they would defer it until the next Administration took over. More seriously, the President said, “I don’t know where I stand, but I think I stand that the best interests of the United States demand an answer in keeping with past decisions.”46 He invited Warren to the White House for a stag dinner, along with Brownell, John W. Davis, who was counsel for the segregationists, and a number of other lawyers. Eisenhower had Davis sit near Warren, who in turn was on the President’s right hand. During dinner, Eisenhower—according to Warren—“went to considerable lengths to tell me what a great man Mr. Davis was.” And as the guests were filing out of the dining room, Eisenhower took Warren by the arm and said of the southerners, “These are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes.”47
If Eisenhower intended to influence Warren, he failed. On May 17, the Court handed down its decision in the case of Brown v. Topeka. It declared segregation by race in public schools to be unconstitutional. Eisenhower was “considerably concerned,” Hagerty recorded in his diary the next day. The President thought that the southerners might “virtually cancel out their public education system,” putting in its place all-white “private” schools to which state money would be diverted. “The President expressed the fear that such a plan if it were followed through would not only handicap Negro children but would work to the detriment of the so-called ‘poor whites’ in the South.”48
Although Eisenhower personally wished that the Court had upheld Plessy v. Ferguson, and said so on a number of occasions (but only in private), he was impressed by the 9 to 0 vote and he certainly was going to meet his responsibilities and enforce the laws. But he would not comment on it in public. At a May 19 press conference, he was asked if he had any advice to give to the South as to how to react. “Not in the slightest,” Eisenhower replied. “The Supreme Court has spoken and I am sworn to uphold the constitutional processes in this country; and I will obey.”49
That refusal to give the South any advice was a strange thing for a man who had fought hard to become the nation’s leader to say. It was an abdication of responsibility. What hurt even more was Eisenhower’s refusal to give Brown v. Topeka a public endorsement. As with McCarthy, Eisenhower insisted time and again that he had neither need nor right to comment. Even as violence flared across the South, as the implementation of desegregation began, Eisenhower refused to ever say that he thought segregation was morally wrong. That allowed the bitter-end segregationists to claim that Eisenhower was secretly on their side, which they said justified their tactics. Warren, and many others, thought that one word from Eisenhower would have made possible a smoother, easier, and quicker transition period.
But Eisenhower never said the word. He insisted that it was not his role to comment on Court decisions, just as firmly as he insisted that the Court’s ruling had a “binding effect” on everyone. He told Hazlett, “I hold to the basic purpose. There must be respect for the Constitution—which means the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution—or we shall have chaos. This I believe with all of my heart—and shall always act accordingly.”50 That was a long way from President Andrew Jackson’s famous dictum, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” But it was also a long way from saying that Brown was morally right. He missed a historic opportunity to provide moral leadership. In fact, until Little Rock in 1957 he provided almost no leadership at all on the most fundamental social problem of his time.
• •
The most serious foreign problem Eisenhower had to face in the summer of 1954, and the one of the largest long-term significance, was Vietnam. The Geneva Conference was under way, with Beetle Smith there as the American representative. With Dien Bien Phu gone, the Communists at Geneva were stalling on the talks while the Vietminh regrouped after their victory and prepared to attack the French throughout the delta region of Vietnam. Which upset Eisenhower most—French defeatism or British refusal to cooperate—would be impossible to say. Australia and New Zealand had told Dulles they were willing to join a regional alliance. On May 5, Eisenhower told a news conference that “we will never give up,” and gave a strong pitch for SEATO.51
Meanwhile a major war scare ensued. The French convinced themselves that the Chinese were on the verge of intervening. If that happened, the French wanted a guarantee of a massive and immediate American intervention.
Dulles was breathing fire. He thought Chinese intervention in Vietnam would be the “equivalent of a declaration of war against the United States.” He advised the President to get a resolution through Congress at once, authorizing him to respond to a possible Chinese intervention as he saw fit. Eisenhower told Dulles (as recorded in notes taken by Cutler), “If he was to go to the Congress for authority he would not ask any halfway measures. If the situation warranted it, there should be declared a state of war with China; and possibly there should be a strike at Russia.” That took Dulles’ breath away. The President’s next point eliminated the idea of a unilateral intervention by the United States. Eisenhower said, “He would never have the United States go into Indochina alone.” Returning to his first point, Eisenhower said: “If the U.S. took action against Communist China, . . . said there should be no halfway measures or frittering around. The Navy and Air Force should go in with full power, using new weapons, and strike at air bases and ports in mainland China.”52
Then Eisenhower called in the JCS. He told the Chiefs that an atomic assault against China would inevitably bring Russia into the war; therefore if the United States were to launch a preventive attack, it had to be against both Russia and China simultaneously. Looking directly at Radford, Eisenhower asked, suppose it were possible to destroy Russia. “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 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.”53
With all the loose talk going on in Washington about atomic strikes, reporters inevitably heard about the JCS and NSC recommendations. At a news conference, Eisenhower was asked to comment on preventive war. He replied, “I don’t believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn’t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.” Was his answer based on military or moral considerations? “It seems to me that when, by definition, a term is just ridiculous in itself, there is no use in going any further,” Eisenhower replied.54
Syngman Rhee flew to Washington to tell Eisenhower that the moment had come to strike hard at the Communists. “Let me tell you that if war comes,” Eisenhower replied to Rhee, “it will be horrible. Atomic war will destroy civilization. War today is unthinkable with the weapons which we have at our command. If the Kremlin and Washington ever lock up in a war, the results are too horrible to contemplate. I can’t even imagine them.”55
Fortunately, the war scare in Indochina went away as quickly as it came on. The Chinese did not intervene. They did not have to, as the Vietminh were driving forward on their own, and the Laniel government in Paris was tottering.
On June 12, the Laniel government fell by a narrow margin, 306–293. On June 18 Pierre Mendès-France took office as Premier on the strength of a pledge that he would secure a peace in Indochina by July 20. Privately, he told Smith—who had flown from Geneva to Paris—that he might be meeting with Chou En-lai. Smith strongly advised him not to. Smith suspected a French sell-out. Neither he, Dulles, nor Eisenhower wanted to be a part of the surrender arrangements at Geneva. Smith therefore returned to the United States, and the American delegation at Geneva was reduced to an “observer” status.
Meanwhile, Churchill and Eden came to Washington; one of the things they discussed with Eisenhower was the French and EDC. Laniel had been a strong supporter of EDC, but Mendès-France was shaky. The final vote on ratification was imminent. Without EDC, there was no program for German rearmament. To influence both the French and the British on the EDC vote, Eisenhower had Knowland steer through the Senate a resolution, adopted unanimously, authorizing the President to take any steps necessary to “restore sovereignty to Germany and to enable her to contribute to the maintenance of peace and security.” In other words, if France and Britain did not get behind EDC, the Americans would help the Germans rearm themselves, outside an all-European army, but inside NATO as a full partner.
On July 21, the Geneva agreements were signed. They established a cease-fire, partitioned Vietnam, called for nationwide elections within two years, forbade the introduction of new military equipment from foreign nations into either part of Vietnam, provided for free movement of people between the two parts of Vietnam, and established a three-nation supervisory commission (Poland, India, and Canada). This was an outcome to which Eisenhower had long since resigned himself. It was acceptable to him because it sealed off the Communist breakthrough and because SEATO was now well on track to establish a new defensive line in Southeast Asia. Ho Chi Minh was the big loser.
Nevertheless, Eisenhower and the Republicans were embarrassed by the loss of northern Vietnam to the Communists, so Eisenhower had Smith issue a declaration that said that United States took note of the agreements, would not use force to upset them, but would not sign them. When Eisenhower informed a news conference on July 21 of the refusal to sign, he emphasized that “the United States has not itself been a party to or bound by the decisions taken.” He added that he was immediately dispatching ambassadors to Laos and Cambodia, and that he was “actively pursuing discussions . . . with view to the rapid organization of a collective defense in Southeast Asia.”56
What Eisenhower had done was face the realities. The French were not going to continue to fight; if the war went on, Ho Chi Minh would win everything in Indochina. At the critical juncture, the United States had neither the air nor troop strength to prevent a Vietminh victory, short of a unilateral atomic strike. But although there was extreme pressure to do just that, from a majority of Eisenhower’s military and civilian advisers, he set political and military obstacles that he knew could not be overcome. Of these, the most important were British cooperation, congressional approval, and a JCS facing of the fact that an atomic strike had to be directed against Russia as well as China, and could hardly be limited to Vietnam. As he had done in the crisis of late April over Dien Bien Phu, Eisenhower in July 1954 again kept America out of Vietnam.
Then he put America into Vietnam. Dulles spent most of August flying around the world, signing up allies for SEATO. By September 8, the process was completed. France, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, and the United States together pledged themselves to defend Southeast Asia. The treaty extended the protection of SEATO to Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam. Less than one month later, Eisenhower pledged full American support to the Prime Minister of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem.
• •
The debacle in Indochina badly strained the NATO alliance. As Gruenther had warned, many Frenchmen put the blame on the United States. They had an opportunity to vent their anger on August 30, when the French Assembly voted on EDC. Dulles had been active in Paris, putting every kind of pressure he could on the French. Eisenhower, at a news conference, added to the pressure by announcing that if the French failed to ratify EDC, the United States would move alone to “secure a better relationship with Germany.” He wanted the French to know that one way or another there was going to be a German rearmament.57 Nevertheless, the Assembly voted to reject EDC, 319 to 264, with 43 abstentions.
Eisenhower had suffered a major setback. Since December 1950, he had labored to create EDC and the all-European army that would go with it, not only in order to get German rearmament under way but also to provide a spur for a United States of Europe. He was disappointed and perplexed. He asked Hagerty, “Are the French deliberately saying they are going to tie up with Russia?” He recalled a meeting he had with the French Cabinet when he was SACEUR, when he had lost his patience and said to the members, “I obviously have a hell of a lot more fear of what happens to France than you do.” Eisenhower said that some of the Frenchmen present “broke down and cried,” but now look, they were rejecting their own proposal, EDC.58
As in Vietnam, Eisenhower had his backup position ready. Immediately upon hearing the result of the vote, he told Smith—who was Acting Secretary of State while Dulles was in Paris—to arrange a meeting of the NATO countries, “with a view of including Germany as an equal partner therein.”59 Thus the chief result of the French vote was to restore German sovereignty, bring Germany into NATO, and create an independent German Army.
Taken together, the loss of North Vietnam and of EDC were serious defeats for Eisenhower. But he had lost only a couple of battles, not the war against Communism. As he so often reminded his Cabinet, “Long faces don’t win wars.” He insisted on remaining optimistic as much as he insisted on being realistic.
• •
A full generation later, after South Vietnam had fallen to the Communists but the remainder of the dominoes had not, Ike’s prophecy looked as ill-considered as his notion that all Communists everywhere were but puppets on Moscow’s string. EDC, meanwhile, had long since been forgotten completely, but Ike’s idea of a United States of Europe remained very much alive. There was no European army, but there was a Western European economy and a European Parliament. Eisenhower’s optimism on that point had proven to be well founded.