IN LATE AUGUST 1954, Eisenhower went to Denver for the start of his vacation. On September 3, he got word from Washington that there was yet another Far East crisis, this one about halfway between Korea and Vietnam. The Chinese had begun shelling two tiny islands, Quemoy and Matsu.
These islands were less than two miles off the Chinese coast. Unlike Formosa and the nearby Pescadores, which had been held by the Japanese for some fifty years, Quemoy and Matsu had always been a part of China. When Chiang fled to Formosa in 1949, he retained his hold on the islands, garrisoned them heavily, and used them to observe the mainland, to stage raids against the mainland, and to disrupt Chinese coastal shipping. Eventually, Chiang hoped to use them as stepping stones for his invasion of the mainland.
The U.S. Seventh Fleet had orders, originated by Truman and continued by Eisenhower, to prevent a Chinese assault against Formosa. Whether Quemoy and Matsu were included in the defensive area was unclear. There were technical and political problems; the U.S. Navy could not get its ships between the islands and the mainland for lack of depth of water, and intervention threatened to put the United States squarely into the Chinese civil war at a time when none of America’s allies, except Chiang, was willing to risk World War III over two tiny offshore islands. Nevertheless Chiang insisted that the fall of Quemoy and Matsu would only be a preliminary to the invasion of Formosa itself, and Eisenhower was told that Nationalist Chinese morale would fall precipitously if no attempt was made to defend them. The JCS informed Eisenhower that although the islands were not militarily necessary to the defense of Formosa, Chiang could not hold them without American assistance.
On September 12, Dulles and the JCS flew to Denver for a conference on what Dulles called “this horrible business.” The Chinese were shelling the islands on a regular basis but had not yet invaded. Radford, backed by the Air Force and Navy chiefs, recommended not only putting American forces on the islands, but also that the United States join Chiang in carrying out bombing raids against the mainland. This was the third time in less than six months that Radford had recommended aggressive action, to include atomic weapons, against China. Eisenhower again rejected the advice. As before, the President said that “if we attack China, we’re not going to impose limits on our military actions, as in Korea.” And, the President added, “If we get into a general war, the logical enemy will be Russia, not China, and we’ll have to strike there.” 1
By late October, the Chinese appeared to be ready to launch their invasion. Despite Eisenhower’s dressing down in September, Radford and the JCS still assumed that when China attacked, the United States would strike hard at the Chinese mainland. Eisenhower told them to make no such assumption. He said he was distressed at their lack of understanding of the constitutional responsibilities of the President. The United States had no treaty with Chiang Kai-shek; the President could not plunge America into a war with China (and possibly Russia) without congressional approval, and especially not over the fate of such insignificant places as Quemoy and Matsu. He told the JCS that if the Chinese attacked Formosa, the Seventh Fleet should act defensively; simultaneously, he would call an immediate session of Congress. There would be no retaliation against the Chinese mainland, no invoking the doctrine of massive retaliation, “pending congressional consideration of the matter.”2
Through November, the threat intensified as the Chinese bombed other small islands held by Chiang’s forces and continued their buildup opposite Quemoy and Matsu. Then, on November 23, the Chinese announced the verdict of a trial of thirteen American fliers who had been shot down over China during the Korean War. They received prison terms ranging from four years to life for espionage. In as much as all but two of the fliers had been in uniform, and in as much as the Korean armistice agreements specified that all POWs would be returned, there was a predictable roar of protest in the United States. Senator Knowland spoke for millions of Americans when he demanded a total blockade of the Chinese coast.
Eisenhower had to respond somehow. Early in December, he signed a mutual-defense treaty with the Nationalist Chinese. It declared that an armed attack on either party would be regarded as an act of war against the other. Chiang agreed not to attack the mainland unilaterally. Eisenhower insisted on restricting the treaty to Formosa and the Pescadores, deliberately leaving out Quemoy and Matsu.
• •
The major concern of most politicians in America in the second half of 1954 was not Germany, nor Vietnam, nor China, but getting re-elected. Eisenhower was also concerned about the elections, if only because of the thin margins the Republicans held in both houses of Congress. He wanted his party to retain control of Congress, and despite his constant reiteration of his nonpartisanship, he exhorted his Cabinet members to do all they could to elect Republicans.
Despite Eisenhower’s efforts, the Republicans lost seventeen seats in the House and two in the Senate, which gave the Democrats control of both chambers of Congress. Most observers felt that only Eisenhower’s last-minute intervention had prevented an even bigger Democratic victory, and Eisenhower pointed out that Republican losses in the off-year election were much less than was customary for the party in power.
One cause of the losses was the Secretary of Defense. Wilson had shot off his mouth during the campaign about unemployed auto workers in Detroit. “I’ve always liked bird dogs better than kennel-fed dogs myself,” Wilson announced. “You know, one who’ll get out and hunt for food rather than sit on his fanny and yell.”3 It was an absurd comparison—bird dogs live in kennels and they do not hunt, kill, and eat the quail, but only point them out to the hunter—and the unnecessary insult of equating the unemployed with lazy dogs set off a storm that cost the Republicans votes. Eisenhower was also unhappy with Wilson because of the Secretary’s inability to control the Chiefs. In preparing his budget for the next fiscal year, Eisenhower had again made substantial cuts in the Army and Navy. The Army would drop from 1.4 million to 1 million, with a budget reduction from $12.9 billion to $8.8 billion; the Navy from 920,000 to 870,000, and from $11.2 to $9.7 billion. The Air Force got a slight increase, from $15.6 to $16.4 billion. All the Chiefs were unwilling to accept these figures. Ridgway was the most outspoken—he said he could not be responsible for the security of American troops in Europe, Korea, and elsewhere with so small an army—but the Navy and Air Force Chiefs also went before Congress to denounce the Eisenhower budget and demand more money.
In December, Eisenhower summoned Wilson and the Chiefs to the Oval Office. General Andrew Goodpaster, Ike’s staff secretary, took notes. Eisenhower gave a brief outline of his military budget, acknowledged that each service could find shortcomings in it, insisted that he had to look at the whole picture, including the state of the economy, and then ordered each of the chiefs to get on the team.
Thus did Eisenhower set the nation’s post-Korea, post-Dien Bien Phu defense policy. The New Look put the emphasis on massive retaliation, on more bang for a buck, on cutting costs everywhere except for the Strategic Air Force and its ability to wage atomic war. The New Look meant big savings, and much grumbling. At times it seemed that except for Humphrey, Eisenhower was the only man in Washington who supported it. From 1955 onward, the Democrats would concentrate their criticisms of Eisenhower on his defense policy, charging that the President—and Humphrey—were allowing their Neanderthal fiscal views to endanger the security of the nation. Despite Eisenhower’s direct order, the JCS continued to supply his critics with countless facts and figures to prove that more money had to be spent on conventional forces.
So strongly, and so often, did the Chiefs—all of them—object to the New Look that Eisenhower was nearly driven to distraction. “Let us not forget that the armed services are to defend a ‘way of life,’ not merely land, property, or lives,” Eisenhower wrote Swede Hazlett. “So what I need to make the Chiefs realize is that they are men of sufficient stature, training, and intelligence to think of this balance—the balance between minimum requirements in the costly implements of war and the health of our economy.”
A major problem was that although each Chief agreed that the sums allocated to the other services were entirely adequate, the amounts provided for his own service were entirely inadequate. Eisenhower told Hazlett that he could run a blue pencil through the Pentagon requests for more money because he knew the Pentagon game so well, “but some day there is going to be a man sitting in my present chair who has not been raised in the military services and who will have little understanding of where slashes in their estimates can be made with little or no damage.” Eisenhower then expressed his great fear: “If that should happen while we still have the state of tension that now exists in the world, I shudder to think of what could happen in this country.”4
The more general complaint about Eisenhower’s New Look was linked to widespread dissatisfaction with the way he was waging the Cold War. Critics—including not only the opposition party but also the Old Guard, the JCS, the NSC, and often the Secretary of State—wanted a more vigorous prosecution of the conflict, as evidenced by the number of times in 1954 they urged the President to launch an atomic strike against China. But Eisenhower would have no part of nuclear war, unless the Russians actually marched across the Elbe River, and he wanted no more Koreas.
He was, however, more than willing to wage an aggressive covert offensive, implemented by the CIA, against the Communists. The CIA was carrying on assorted covert operations around the world. Because it was his chief instrument for waging the Cold War, and because it was so controversial, Eisenhower kept a close watch on the CIA. In late October, he spent an afternoon with General Jimmie Doolittle and the other members of the committee he had created to investigate the Agency. At the end of the meeting, Doolittle handed Eisenhower the committee’s report. Its conclusion was chilling: “It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination . . . There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. . . . We must . . . learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us.”5 That was a concise summary of Eisenhower’s own views, and described accurately the methods he had already used in Iran, Guatemala, and North Vietnam.
The CIA’s other main function was the less glamorous one of collecting and interpreting intelligence. Like everyone else of his generation, Eisenhower had been deeply scared by the intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor; by the fifties, the advantage of surprise to an attacker who had atomic weapons was incalculably greater than it had been in the early forties. Eisenhower wanted information from within the Soviet Union; he especially wanted an early warning on any mobilization of planes or troops. But the CIA had been unable to place any spy networks inside Russia.
Early in 1954, Eisenhower set up a Surprise Attack Panel to advise him on what to do. The chairman was Dr. James R. Killian, president of MIT. A key member was Edwin H. Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera and winner of a Nobel Prize (1952). Land reported that new cameras were available that made high-level precision photography possible. The trick was to get the cameras over Russia. The Air Force had made several attempts, using redesigned bombers and unmanned balloons, but the results were disappointing.
Meanwhile, Clarence (“Kelly”) Johnson, the top designer at Lockheed, had proposed a high-altitude single-engine reconnaissance aircraft that was really more a kite with an enormous wingspan, a single jet engine, and an ability to fly long distances above seventy thousand feet. Lockheed called the plane the U-2. Allen Dulles liked it; Killian liked it; Land liked it. On November 24, they went to see Eisenhower to ask authorization to build thirty U-2s at a cost of $35 million. The CIA and the Defense Department would split the bill. Foster Dulles, who was also present, indicated “that difficulties might arise out of these flights, but we can live through them.” Allen Dulles put Richard Bissell in charge. At the conclusion of the meeting, Goodpaster noted, “The President directed those present to go ahead and get the equipment, but before initiating operations to come in for one last look at the plans.”6
• •
Immediately after the U-2 meeting, Eisenhower, his family, and his gang went to Augusta for Thanksgiving. Accompanying them was Field Marshal Montgomery, who had—Ike complained—“invited himself.” At Thanksgiving dinner, the two old soldiers regaled the party with war stories. They got to talking about Gettysburg. Ike gave a lecture on his favorite battle. When he got to Pickett’s charge, he said that Lee’s reply to Pickett’s suggestion that he attack the enemy—“Do it if you can”—was a most unusual one. As a commanding general himself, Ike said, he would never give a subordinate so much leeway. Montgomery said he had good reason to know that was true.
Later, Monty got started on all the things he did not know about America. He said he had never heard of Princeton, only Harvard and Yale. On the liner crossing the Atlantic, he recounted, he was introduced at the captain’s table to a man named Spencer Tracy. Monty had to ask Mr. Tracy what business he was in. After dinner, the men settled down to play bridge, all except Monty, who did not play cards and therefore had Mamie teach him to play Scrabble.
The following morning, Monty asked Ike about what it was like to be the President. “No man on earth knows what this job is all about,” Ike replied. “It’s pound, pound, pound. Not only is your intellectual capacity taxed to the utmost, but your physical stamina.”7
The Eisenhowers returned to Augusta for Christmas and New Year’s. On this occasion there was an unusual tension in the air because Eisenhower had to wait out the French vote on German rearmament. He worried that he would have to return to Washington if the vote went badly. There was, therefore, great relief all around when on December 30 word arrived that the French Assembly had ratified the agreement.
Thus did Eisenhower’s second year in office end on a happy and successful note. French acceptance of his program for Germany had led to a stronger NATO, one of Eisenhower’s proudest achievements. There were many other victories to toast that New Year’s Eve. McCarthy had been censured. SEATO was functioning. The budget was almost in balance. Defense spending was sharply down. Eisenhower’s popularity, according to the polls, was remarkably high—he had a 60 percent or higher approval rating. There had been setbacks, of course. The ones Eisenhower felt most strongly were the loss of North Vietnam, the failure to bring the Old Guard into the mainstream of moderate politics, and the election losses that turned control of the Congress over to the Democrats. There were also ongoing issues, fraught with danger, such as Quemoy and Matsu, the stability of South Vietnam, and of course all the domestic problems. But as Eisenhower looked back on 1953 and 1954, the deep sense of personal satisfaction he felt about his record was based upon, far and above all other considerations, his success in making and keeping peace.
Eisenhower had told Hagerty that his “one purpose” was “the job of keeping this world at peace.”8 At times it appeared that he was the only man who could do it. In mid-1953, most of his military, foreign-policy, and domestic political advisers were opposed to accepting an armistice in place in Korea. But Eisenhower insisted on peace. Five times in 1954, virtually the entire NSC, JCS, and State Department recommended that he intervene in Asia, even using atomic bombs against China. First, in April, as the Dien Bien Phu situation grew critical. Second, in May, on the eve of the fall of Dien Bien Phu. Third, in late June, when the French said the Chinese were about to enter the Indochina conflict. Fourth, in September, when the Chinese began shelling Quemoy and Matsu. Fifth, in November, when the Chinese announced the prison terms for the American fliers.
Five times in one year the experts advised the President to launch an atomic strike against China. Five times he said no. He did so most dramatically in a news conference in late November, when he was asked about the possibilities of a preventive strike against the Chinese. Eisenhower took ten minutes to reply, in off-the-cuff remarks that were delivered with visible emotion. After giving a lengthy analysis, Eisenhower leaned forward and said he wanted “to talk a little bit personally.” He admitted that “a President experiences exactly the same resentments, the same anger, the same kind of sense of frustration almost, when things like this occur to other Americans, and his impulse is to lash out.” He said he knew that would be the “easy course” as well. The nation would be “united automatically.” It would close ranks behind the leader. The job would become a simple one—win the war. “There is a real fervor developed throughout the nation that you can feel everywhere you go. There is practically an exhilaration about the affair.” Eisenhower confessed that he was not immune to those feelings: “In the intellectual and spiritual contest of matching wits and getting along to see if you can win, there comes about something . . . an atmosphere is created . . . an attitude is created to which I am not totally unfamiliar.”
Five times in one year the experts had advised him to enjoy that experience once again. But Eisenhower had other memories too. He reminded the reporters of his own favorite line from Robert E. Lee: “It is well that war is so terrible; if it were not so, we would grow too fond of it.” He said he had personally experienced “the job of writing letters of condolence by the hundreds, by the thousands, to bereaved mothers and wives. That is a very sobering experience.” So he pleaded with the reporters, and through them to the people, to think things through before rushing off to act. Try to imagine the results, he said. “Don’t go to war in response to emotions of anger and resentment; do it prayerfully.”9
Five times in 1954 Eisenhower prayed over the question of war or peace. Each time, he made the decision to stay at peace.
• •
On New Year’s Day, 1955, Chiang Kai-shek predicted “war at any time” over Quemoy and Matsu. On the other side of the Formosa Straits, Chou En-lai said that a Chinese invasion of Formosa was “imminent.”10 Thus did the two Chinese rivals intensify the Formosa Straits crisis, which soon became one of the most serious of Eisenhower’s eight years in office. Indeed the United States in early 1955 came closer to using atomic weapons than at any other time in the Eisenhower Administration.
On January 10, the ChiCom Air Force raided the Tachen Islands, two hundred miles from Formosa but held by ChiNat troops. (For the sake of simplicity, this account will use the terminology of the Eisenhower Administration in distinguishing the two sides—ChiComs were the Chinese Communists, while the ChiNats were the Chinese Nationalists.) Eisenhower decided that “the time had come to draw the line.”11 This decision immediately raised the problem of where to draw the line, a problem that was never fully resolved and that deepened the crisis. Certainly the Americans were going to fight to defend Formosa—Eisenhower had made treaty arrangements in December of 1954 that required the United States to do so—and the Pescadores were included in the area to be defended.
But what of Quemoy and Matsu? They were so close to the Chinese mainland, so unquestionably a part of China, so far from Formosa (and in any case so small that they could not be used as a platform for the invasion of Formosa) that almost no one, except Chiang, thought they were worth defending. The Tachens added to the problem: Were they also vital to the defense of Formosa?
Eisenhower decided to let the Tachens go, while deliberately remaining vague about Quemoy and Matsu. He managed to maintain the vagueness throughout a series of war scares during the crisis. It was the cornerstone of his policy, and he held to it despite the manifold problems it created for him with his European allies, his own military and JCS, Chiang, Congress, and the American public.
On January 19, Eisenhower met with Dulles to discuss a resolution Eisenhower wanted Congress to pass, giving him authority to commit American armed forces to the defense of Formosa and the Pescadores. Dulles agreed there was a need for such a resolution, but he wanted to include Quemoy and Matsu, which Eisenhower would not permit. Instead, Eisenhower said the wording he wanted would allow the President to react in defense of Formosa and the Pescadores and “such other territories as may be determined.”12
The resolution Eisenhower wanted was something new in American history. Never before had Congress given the President a blank check to act as he saw fit in a foreign crisis. Fully aware of the unprecedented nature of his request, Eisenhower talked with all the congressional leaders before submitting it. He explained his thinking and his wishes to Joe Martin, the minority leader, and Sam Rayburn, the Speaker of the House; they assured him that the House would “approve his action and without any criticism whatsoever.”13
On January 24, Eisenhower sent his message to Congress, asking for a resolution that would “clearly and publicly establish the authority of the President as Commander in Chief to employ the armed forces of this nation promptly and effectively for the purposes indicated if in his judgment it became necessary.” The “purposes indicated” included not only the defense of Formosa and the Pescadores, as required by treaty, but also the defense of “closely related localities,” which meant—or did it?—Quemoy and Matsu.14 The President did not, would not, say.
The House responded as Martin and Rayburn said it would; within the hour of receiving the message, it gave the President unlimited authority to act as he saw fit, by a vote of 410 to 3.
On January 28, by a vote of 83 to 3, the Senate passed the resolution. For the first time in American history, the Congress had authorized the President in advance to engage in a war at a time and under circumstances of his own choosing.
He was also free to use whatever weapons he saw fit. Dulles urged him to drop a couple of atomic bombs on the Chinese mainland airfields. Eisenhower replied that he did not want any talk about atomic bombs. Nor would he consider sending American troops to Formosa. But he did want to do something.
What the President needed was more precise information on the situation in Quemoy and Matsu. He was dissatisfied with the intelligence he was getting from the CIA. He therefore decided to send his closest and most trusted adviser, Goodpaster, to the Pacific. Pulling Goodpaster aside after the NSC meeting, Eisenhower told him to find out “how fast ChiCom attacks in various forms might develop,” and how long the ChiNats could hold out on their own if they had American logistical support.15 Goodpaster went, investigated, and returned to report that the ChiNats were rapidly improving their defense on Quemoy and Matsu, rushing in troops, and would be capable of defending themselves against a ChiCom attack, unless the ChiComs threw their air force into the battle. In that case, “U.S. support would be required, and would probably have to include special weapons.”16
The use of “special weapons” had, by the time Goodpaster returned, become a matter of public debate. On March 12, Dulles said in a speech that the United States had “new and powerful weapons of precision which can utterly destroy military targets without endangering unrelated civilian centers.” Three days later, he was even more specific, saying that the United States was prepared to use tactical atomic weapons in case of war in the Formosa Straits. This was a clear and unambiguous threat, much clearer than those Dulles and Eisenhower had made against the ChiComs two years earlier with regard to Korea. Dulles cleared his statement with the President before making it.17 Inevitably, it set off an uproar within the U.S. and throughout the world.
At Eisenhower’s March 16 news conference, Charles von Fremd of CBS asked him to comment on Dulles’ assertion that in the event of war in the Far East, “we would probably make use of some tactical small atomic weapons.” Eisenhower was unusually direct in his answer: “Yes, of course they would be used.” He explained, “In any combat where these things can be used on strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes, I see no reason why they shouldn’t be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.” But would not the United States itself be destroyed in a nuclear war? Eisenhower replied, “Nobody in war or anywhere else ever made a good decision if he was frightened to death. You have to look facts in the face, but you have to have the stamina to do it without just going hysterical.”18
Democrats found it difficult to avoid hysteria when the President started comparing atomic weapons to bullets. Lyndon Johnson warned against undertaking “an irresponsible adventure for which we have not calculated the risks,” and Adlai Stevenson expressed “the gravest misgivings about risking a third world war in defense of these little islands.”
On the other side, Radford could barely suppress his excitement; the chairman of the JCS said that “there is a distinct possibility that war can break out at any time.” And Senator Wiley pronounced his judgment: “Either we can defend the United States in the Formosa Straits—now, or we can defend it later in San Francisco Bay.” General James Van Fleet wanted to send American troops to Quemoy and Matsu; if the Chinese continued shelling the islands, Eisenhower could “shoot back with atomic weapons and annihilate the Red effort.” Knowland added his perspective—there should be no “appeasement,” no matter what the risks. Dulles, in a speech on March 20, managed to raise the tension even higher by referring to the ChiComs in terms usually reserved for use against nations at war. The Secretary said the Chinese were “an acute and imminent threat . . . dizzy with success,” more dangerous than the Russians. He compared their “aggressive fanaticism” with Hitler’s.19
Three days later, Eisenhower was walking with Hagerty from the White House to the Executive Office Building for a press conference. Hagerty said he had just received a frantic plea. “Mr. President, some of the people in the State Department say that the Formosa Strait situation is so delicate that no matter what question you get on it, you shouldn’t say anything at all.” Eisenhower laughed and replied, “Don’t worry, Jim, if that question comes up, I’ll just confuse them.”20
He did. Joseph C. Harsch asked him about using atomic weapons in the Formosa Straits, and he responded with a long, rambling reply that was incomprehensible. Years later Eisenhower still got a chuckle out of thinking about the difficulties Chinese and Russian intelligence analysts must have had in trying to put his remarks into their language and then explain to their bosses what the American President meant. Eventually, Harsch interjected, “Sir, I am a little stupid about this thing,” and asked for further clarification. Eisenhower explained that he could not be precise. “The only thing I know about war are two things: the most changeable factor in war is human nature in its day-by-day manifestation; but the only unchanging factor in war is human nature. And the next thing is that every war is going to astonish you in the way it occurred, and in the way it is carried out. So that for a man to predict, particularly if he had the responsibility for making the decision, to predict what he is going to use, how he is going to do it, would I think exhibit his ignorance of war; that is what I believe. So I think you just have to wait, and that is the kind of prayerful decision that may some day face a President.”21
But in fact, by mid-April the crisis was over. On April 23, Chou spoke at Bandung about Chinese friendship for the American people and said that the ChiComs “do not want to have a war with the United States.” He offered to negotiate. Eisenhower responded positively, saying he was ready to talk “if there seemed to be an opportunity for us to further the easing of tensions.” Chou continued his conciliatory line, saying that the ChiComs “are willing to strive for the liberation of Formosa by peaceful means as far as this is possible.” The shelling of Quemoy and Matsu eased off; by mid-May, it ceased entirely. On August 1, talks between American and Chinese representatives began.22
Throughout the crisis, Eisenhower had been beset by conflicting advice. As he recounted it in his memoirs, “The administration heard the counsel of Attlee (liquidate Chiang), Eden (neutralize Quemoy and Matsu), [Democratic Senators] (abandon Quemoy and Matsu), Lewis Douglas (avoid entry into a civil war, on legal principle), Radford (fight for the Tachens, bomb the mainland), Knowland (blockade the Chinese coast), and Rhee (join him and Chiang in a holy war of liberation).”23 But the only counsel Eisenhower really took was his own. As a result, he emerged from the crisis with all his objectives secured. Chiang still held the islands, and the American commitment to defend Formosa was stronger than ever. These results satisfied all but the most extreme members of the China Lobby and the Old Guard.
Eisenhower had gotten a blank check from Congress that gave him total freedom of action. As a result, he had managed to so confuse the ChiComs as to whether or not the United States would use atomic bombs against them in the defense of Quemoy and Matsu that they decided not to attack. True, his comparison of an atomic bomb to bullets scared the wits out of people around the world, but through his actions and press-conference ambiguities Eisenhower had managed to convince the Europeans, and others, that he was neither hysterical nor cold-blooded. He never had to use the bomb; he did not plunge the world into war; he kept the peace without losing any territory or prestige.
Eisenhower’s handling of the Quemoy-Matsu crisis was a tour de force, one of the great triumphs of his long career. The key to his success was his deliberate ambiguity and deception. As Robert Divine writes, “The beauty of Eisenhower’s policy is that to this day no one can be sure whether or not he would have responded militarily to an invasion of the offshore islands, and whether he would have used nuclear weapons.”24 The full truth is that Eisenhower himself did not know. In retrospect, what stands out about Eisenhower’s crisis management is that at every stage he kept his options open. Flexibility was one of his chief characteristics as Supreme Commander in World War II; as President, he insisted on retaining that flexibility. He never knew himself just how he would respond to an invasion of Quemoy and Matsu, because he insisted on waiting to see the precise nature of the attack before deciding how to react. What he did know was that when the moment of decision came, he would have the maximum number of options to choose from.
• •
The Formosa experience made Eisenhower yearn, more than ever, for a genuine peace. To attain that goal, he would have to deal with the Russians. The last time the leader of the United States sat down with the leader of the Soviet Union had been in 1945, at Yalta and Potsdam. Because of the outcome of those conferences, the Old Guard was dead set against another summit. Eisenhower, too, had objections to a summit. For one thing, it was not clear who was in command in the Kremlin. For another, Eisenhower thought the major outstanding problems—two Germanies, two Koreas, two Vietnams, two Chinas, and arms control—were intractable.
Still, he wanted to reach out. His urge was reinforced by changes in the Soviet leadership. Nikolai Malenkov was gone. Bulganin had become chairman of the Council of Ministers; Nikita Khrushchev was First Secretary of the Communist Party; Marshal Zhukov had become Minister of Defense. Together they formed a troika. In May 1955, they reached out to Eisenhower when they announced that the Soviet Union was ready to sign the Austrian peace treaty, which would restore Austria’s independence and make Austria neutral, on the Swiss model. This was the “deed” Eisenhower had been demanding as proof of the Soviets’ sincere intentions. On June 13, a month after the Austrian Treaty was signed, the Foreign Ministers announced that there would be a summit in Geneva beginning on July 18.
• •
Anticipation of the first Summit Conference since Yalta and Potsdam, coupled with the end of the Formosa Straits crisis and the general peace that prevailed around the world, added to a feeling of near-euphoria millions of Americans enjoyed in 1955. Everything was going beautifully for the Eisenhower Administration. For the first time in their lives, Eisenhower took pride in declaring, Americans born after 1929 were experiencing peace, progress, and prosperity simultaneously. The short-lived post-Korean War recession was over, thanks in some part to Eisenhower’s extension of Social Security benefits, his stepped-up expenditures during the recession, and his ability to convince Congress to extend unemployment compensation to some four million workers not previously covered. In addition, Eisenhower got Congress to raise the minimum wage from seventy-five cents per hour to one dollar per hour.
In mid-1955, George Meany, head of the AFL-CIO, told his associates: “American labor has never had it so good.”25 By early 1955 a boom was on, but without inflation—consumer prices went up only 1 percent. The result was a buying spree. The auto industry benefited most dramatically. In 1955, Detroit sold 7.92 million cars, which was up more than 2 million over 1954 and remained the record for one-year sales until 1965. The percentage of families owning automobiles jumped from 60 percent in 1952 to 70 percent in 1955 (and reached 77 percent by 1960). When some five thousand wives of the National Association of Automobile Dealers came to the White House, Mamie—who met them—told her husband “that is one crowd that is prospering! I never saw so many furs and diamonds.”26
The American people for their part had never seen so many cars; the problem was that the road system was woefully inadequate. Except in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, the major urban areas had few or no high-speed expressways. Except for the Pennsylvania Turnpike and a few other toll roads in the East, the country had no four-lane highways connecting the cities.
Ever since a cross-country trip by Army convoy in 1919, Eisenhower had been concerned about America’s highways. Like almost every other American who fought in Germany in 1945, he had been impressed by Hitler’s system of Autobahnen. There had been many stops and starts by Congress over the past two decades in an attempt to upgrade and modernize the American road system, but almost no real action, primarily because of federal-state disputes over who would pay for the construction, a problem compounded by the trucking industry, the American Automobile Association, and the many other parts of the “highway lobby,” which was composed of so many different interest groups that it could never present a unified position to Congress.
Eisenhower wanted the highways built. To him, it was an ideal program for the federal government to undertake. First, the need was clear and inescapable. Second, a unified system could only be erected by the federal government. Third, it was a public-works program on a massive scale, indeed the largest public-works program in history, which meant that the government could put millions of men to work without subjecting itself to the criticism that this was “make-work” of the WPA or PWA variety. By tailoring expenditures for highways to the state of the economy, Eisenhower could use the program to flatten out the peaks and valleys in unemployment.
Eisenhower was often called by his critics a “Whig President,” with the implication that he was a “do-nothing” leader. But by advocating a highway program on a gigantic scale, Eisenhower was putting himself and his Administration within the best and strongest tradition of nineteenth-century American Whigs. John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and the other great Whigs had all been advocates of internal improvements paid for by the federal government. Eisenhower’s highway program brought that tradition up to date.
In July 1954, Eisenhower had made his first move. At that time, he was trying to “build up” a possible successor for 1956; as a part of that effort, he sent Nixon to speak at a Governors’ Conference and gave him a major policy speech to make. Nixon staggered the audience with the scope of the Administration’s proposal. Eisenhower’s grand plan advocated a comprehensive program, including roads for farm-to-market travel and rapid intercity and interregional travel. He suggested spending $5 billion per year for the next ten years, in addition to the $700 million already being spent annually. Nixon’s speech had an “electrifying effect” on the governors, and on the public. In September 1954, Eisenhower put Lucius Clay at the head of a blue-ribbon private citizens’ committee to study methods of financing. By the summer of 1955, a road-building bill was working its way through Congress.27