EISENHOWER, ACCORDING TO C. D. Jackson, suffered from an “exaggerated desire to have everybody happy,” which prevented him from making “clean-cut decisions.”1 The case of the generators for the Chief Joseph Dam was one example. It was hardly a major issue, although Eisenhower and his Cabinet spent hours discussing it, but it was illustrative of Eisenhower’s willingness to abandon principle when faced with practical problems or political resistance. The case involved procurement of generators for the dam, which was being built by the Corps of Engineers. To Secretary Wilson’s consternation, a British firm came in 12 percent below the lowest American bidder, Westinghouse. Wilson refused to make a decision to award the contract to the British (Wilson’s habit of bucking his decisions up to Eisenhower was already causing the President much anguish, leading Eisenhower to wonder to his aides how a man who was so hesitant to take control could ever have run General Motors).2 At a Cabinet meeting in early March, Wilson had outlined his problem. Westinghouse wanted the contract badly, he said, and the Corps of Engineers was arguing that maintenance was easier on American equipment. On the other hand, Wilson knew that Eisenhower was committed to free trade, and that the President wished to strengthen the economies of the NATO allies. And of course there were budgetary considerations—a significant sum of money could be saved by buying British. Wilson concluded his presentation, then said, “Well, Mr. President?” Eisenhower replied, “Well, just shooting from the hip, I’d say to give the order to the British.”3
A month later Wilson still had not placed the order. The Cabinet took up the subject again. Dulles reminded Eisenhower that the NSC had made a decision to encourage procurement abroad. Stassen and Lodge warned that the British were watching this one closely, to see if Eisenhower really was committed to free trade. Eisenhower said, “My own mind is made up on what is right in the long term. But if the protectionists can exploit this case, we’d be foolish to do it.”
On the other hand, he added, “If we can do it without trouble, let’s do it, because I can see no excuse for us to be a high-protectionist country.” Brownell reminded him that the bill extending the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act was before Congress, that most Republicans opposed extension, and that giving the contract to the British would increase anti-RTAA sentiment. But Dulles told the President, “We’ve got to lead on this one. We can’t bend to the ‘Buy American’ cry.” Eisenhower responded that “it is not a matter of courage; I’m just wondering about the effect.” “Exactly,” Dulles said. “Without our leadership we can’t expect Congress to favor RTAA.” Eisenhower pointed out that “if we’re going to do anything at all about building up foreign economies, we’ve got to buy foreign someplace along the way.” Nixon warned about the political effect; Wilson said Westinghouse would be hurt if it lost the order. “Bunk!” Eisenhower snapped. “If a big American company has to worry over this endangering its positions, I regard that as bunk.” Wilson suggested that he ask for rebids. “Let’s not pussyfoot,” Eisenhower replied. “We have to swim or sink sometime.” Nixon repeated what Eisenhower had said about having to buy abroad sometime. The Vice-President agreed that it was “risky,” but added, “Let’s start educating Congress. We’ll still get RTAA.” Wilson finally said he would place the order with the British, shrugging that he could take the heat, if only because “I haven’t been in much trouble lately.”4
But by the time of the next meeting, on April 10, Wilson had backslid. He said he wanted to reject the present bids, change the specifications, and ask for new bids. Well, said Eisenhower, “I trust you will not load the specifications in favor of Westinghouse.” Dulles, grim-faced, mumbled, “I’ll bet ten to one that the foreign stuff is not taken.” Don’t give up too soon, said Wilson. “You are never going to buy the British materials,” Dulles replied.5
In May, Wilson did call for new bids. When George Sloan of Chrysler, who was in Vienna for an international meeting of businessmen trying to promote a freer flow of goods, complained to Eisenhower about Wilson’s refusal to give the contract to the British, the President assured Sloan that “foreign bidders will receive fair treatment in the judging of bids . . . It is our purpose to help other nations earn their way and in return we will expect them to conduct their affairs so as to maximize world trade.”6 At a Cabinet meeting, Eisenhower told Wilson that “I have a personal interest in hoping the British get it,” but added, “My personal beliefs can’t decide the issue.” He thought “our policy should vary as depending on our employment level at home,” and pointed out that Westinghouse was already working at full capacity. But, said Wilson, who could understand, the company still wanted the order, and in the end he gave it to them. Six months later, Wilson did award one small contract to the British.7
• •
Emmet Hughes, like C. D. Jackson, was distressed at Eisenhower’s refusal to set a course and hold to it. It seemed to Hughes that Eisenhower had no clear convictions, or if he did, that he was always ready to compromise them.8 The extension of RTAA provided him with another example. Eisenhower had asked for a two-year extension, but Republican leaders in Congress wanted to scrap RTAA and raise tariffs. On May 25, Charles Halleck, majority leader in the House, told the President that Dulles had said in closed hearings on the extension that “we’re not going to make anymore reciprocal agreements, so perhaps we don’t need to extend the act.” Eisenhower shot back, “I promise you that we’ll have a new Secretary of State if that is so!”9 But then he agreed to a compromise. He accepted a one-year extension in return for congressional support for a commission created to study foreign economic policy and make recommendations. Eisenhower appointed Clarence Randall, chairman of Inland Steel, as chairman.
Eisenhower’s aides felt that his eagerness to hear all sides before making a decision was a source of weakness, that his sensitivity to every pressure group led him to seek the lowest possible common denominator as the basis for decision. Eisenhower felt that this trait was a source of strength. He wanted to hear every legitimate point of view, to take all possible repercussions into account, before acting. Among other things, this meant he abhorred yes-men. During a Cabinet discussion over ways to cut spending, for example, Lodge suggested reducing grants to the states for highway programs. Eisenhower replied that “my personal opinion is that we should spend more for highways.” Lodge mumbled, “I withdraw.” Eisenhower wanted none of that. “It’s open to discussion,” he told Lodge, and reminded him that “I’ve given way on a number of personal opinions to this gang.”10
Eisenhower actively sought conflicting views. When he took office, the Canadians were threatening to build the St. Lawrence Seaway on their own if the United States would not join them in the project. Eisenhower wanted to participate, but he knew there was strong opposition, because Milton Eisenhower and George Humphrey were leading spokesmen for the Pennsylvania and Ohio railroad and coal companies that opposed the project. Eisenhower thought the Pennsylvania and Ohio crowd were putting their selfish interests ahead of the obvious long-term good of the United States, but he insisted on hearing their point of view. In late April, he told Milton he realized he was “hearing only the pro side of the argument,” so he invited a group of railroad presidents to the White House, and for three hours listened to their side. They claimed that the seaway would cost the United States more than $2 billion; proponents were suggesting that the cost would be less than $500 million. “In such a confused situation,” Eisenhower told Milton, “you have to dig pretty deep to find out what the facts really are because each allegation is presented with a very large share of emotionalism and prejudice.”11
Eisenhower decided to support the seaway, on grounds that he regarded as irrefutable—it was necessary for national defense. Experts convinced him that the country’s principal source of high-grade iron ore, the Mesabi Range in Minnesota, was running out, and that the United States needed a sure way, in time of war, to ship high-grade ore from Labrador to the steel mills along the Great Lakes. It also helped that Senator Alexander Wiley, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, introduced a new bill that cut American costs for the project from $566 million to less than $100 million, with a provision that the Treasury would be paid back by users’ fees. That bill, with strong Administration backing, emerged from the Foreign Relations Committee in June.12
• •
Of all Eisenhower’s backings and fillings, none distressed such aides as Hughes and Jackson more than his refusal to denounce McCarthy. The senator continued to make his charges, allegations, and threats. That spring, Eisenhower got word that McCarthyites in the FBI were passing on to the senator information branding the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr. Ralph Bunche, a Negro American who was working at the U.N., as a Communist. Eisenhower, visibly upset, told Maxwell Rabb, an aide in charge of relations with minority groups, that he felt “very strongly about this. Bunche is a superior man, a credit to our country. I can’t just stand by and permit a man like that to be chopped to pieces because of McCarthy feeling. This report will kill his public career and I am not going to be a party to this.” Eisenhower instructed Rabb to go to New York and tell Bunche that the President was ready to support him in public. Bunche told Rabb that he would stand alone. The next month, he did so before HUAC. While the hearings were going on, Eisenhower invited Bunche to dine at the White House—secretly. Bunche survived the inquisition without any help, beyond moral support, from Eisenhower.13
McCarthy, in Eisenhower’s view, sought headlines, not Communists. A whirlwind tour of Europe that spring by McCarthy’s young men, Roy Cohn and G. David Schine, seemed to the President to prove the point. Cohn and Schine were “investigating” Communist penetration of the Voice of America by examining the holdings of America’s overseas libraries. Those libraries had already been pretty thoroughly purged by Dulles’ orders, but still Cohn and Schine were shocked at what they discovered. They announced that they had found books written by 418 Communists or fellow travelers still being circulated. McCarthy demanded that Dulles trace the book orders and find out who had authorized the purchase of books by such people as Foster Rhea Dulles (the Secretary’s cousin, a distinguished historian), John Dewey, and Robert M. Hutchins. Dulles then banned “the works of all Communist authors” and “any publication which continuously publishes Communist propaganda.”14 Some books were burned. Dulles also dismissed some 830 employees of the Voice.
The spectacle was more than many columnists could bear. Richard Rovere, Walter Lippmann, Bruce Catton, and others demanded that Eisenhower speak out. He refused. “I deplore and deprecate the table-pounding, name-calling methods that columnists so much love,” he explained to one correspondent. “This is not because of any failure to love a good fight; it merely represents my belief that such methods are normally futile.”15 On May 9, Eisenhower’s friend Harry Bullis of General Mills warned him “that the senator has unlimited personal ambitions, unmitigated gall, and unbounded selfishness. In the opinion of many of us who are your loyal friends, it is a fallacy to assume that McCarthy will kill himself. It is our belief that McCarthy should be stopped soon.” Still Eisenhower refused. He told Bullis that “this particular individual wants, above all else, publicity. Nothing would probably please him more than to get the publicity that would be generated by public repudiation by the President.” That would only “increase his appeal as an after-dinner speaker and so allow him to raise the fees that he charges,” which Eisenhower thought was McCarthy’s chief motivation. Eisenhower said he realized “it is a sorry mess,” and admitted that “at times one feels almost like hanging his head in shame.”16 But shame or no, he would not act.
Even if Eisenhower tried to ignore McCarthy, no one else would. Cohn and Schine were dominating the news, pushing the major issues of statecraft off the front pages, and there was a veritable national uproar over the holdings of America’s overseas libraries. In Europe, if possible, the uproar was even greater. Philip Reed of General Electric went to Europe to assess the damage for Eisenhower. Reed reported that “it was surprising how seriously McCarthy and his tactics are taken in Europe” and spoke of the “shattered morale” in America’s leading propaganda agency. He advised Eisenhower to “take public issue with McCarthy” in order to correct the European impression of “abject appeasement.”17
On June 14, at Dartmouth College commencement exercises, Eisenhower did speak out. Talking without notes, he began with a rambling discourse on college life, golf, and patriotism. Then, leaning forward, he admonished the graduates, “Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book.”18
The pronouncement caused great excitement among the press, which speculated that Eisenhower was finally, at last, going to go after McCarthy. But it was not to be. The next day, Dulles asked Eisenhower if he wanted recent restrictions on material in the overseas libraries lifted. Eisenhower said no, “it would be undesirable to buy or handle books which were persuasive of Communism.”19 At a news conference on June 17, Merriman Smith asked the President whether the Dartmouth speech was “critical of a school of thought represented by Senator McCarthy.” Eisenhower immediately backtracked. “Now, Merriman,” he began gently, “you have been around me long enough to know I never talk personalities.” He said he was opposed to the “suppression of ideas,” but then he backtracked. He said, “If the State Department is burning a book which is an open appeal to everybody in those foreign countries to be a Communist, then I would say that falls outside of the limits I was speaking, and they can do as they please to get rid of them.”20 Did that mean he approved of book burning? Well, no, not exactly.21
Eisenhower was equally vague in the privacy of his Cabinet meetings. On June 26 he told Dulles it was all becoming too embarrassing, and he wanted the Secretary to issue yet another statement on book policy (seven had already been sent out). Dulles, harassed himself, charged that Voice employees were burning books “out of fear or hatred for McCarthy,” and out of a desire to embarrass the Secretary of State. Eisenhower said that he “could not conceive of fighting the Commies by ducking our heads in the sand,” but then, on the other hand, he did not want American libraries distributing Communist propaganda. On still another hand, he said he knew for a fact that the German people “love our libraries,” that he was proud to know that a library in Bonn carried a book that “severely criticizes me—on the battle of the Rhine or something,” and that “I hate censorship.”22 Dulles finally escaped his predicament by issuing yet another directive, which said that books in overseas libraries should be “about the United States, its people and policies.” McCarthy, meanwhile, was off after new targets, and Eisenhower had avoided an open break with the senator.
• •
The execution of the Rosenbergs was intimately associated with the national hysteria that McCarthy fed on. By May, all the Rosenbergs’ appeals had been turned down, and their only hope was executive clemency. Eisenhower had made the decision once to allow the execution to go forward, but now—with the date near at hand—he found himself subjected to increased pressure to commute the sentence. By no means was the intense, worldwide pressure confined to liberals, humanitarians, or the Communist press. Allen Dulles proposed that the Rosenbergs be presented with CIA information on the persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union, then given an offer of clemency if they would “appeal to Jews in all countries to get out of the communist movement and seek to destroy it.”23 From Paris, Ambassador C. Douglas Dillon cabled an urgent plea to commute because of the effect of the execution on European public opinion. Dillon thought there were legitimate reasons for doubting the Rosenbergs’ guilt, and said that even those who were convinced of their guilt thought that execution was “completely unjustified from moral standpoint and is due only to political climate peculiar to the United States.” Citing the disastrous impression Cohn and Schine had just made in Europe, Dillon warned that virtually all Europeans would regard the killing of the Rosenbergs as another example of craven appeasement of McCarthy.24
C. D. Jackson, worried as always about the psychological repercussions of a decision, also urged clemency. His motive included wanting to use the Rosenbergs. Jackson asked Brownell to find a Jewish matron who could “ingratiate herself” with the Rosenbergs, and through the matron to get them to break and name their superiors and repudiate Communists.25 Clyde Miller, a professor at Columbia, asked the President to commute on the grounds that it would serve to enhance America’s reputation and standing in the world.
Eisenhower would not be moved. He told Miller that Communist leaders believed “that free governments—and especially the American government—are notoriously weak and fearful and that consequently subversive and other kind of activity can be conducted against them with no real fear of dire punishment.” The Rosenbergs, Eisenhower argued, had “exposed to greater danger of death literally millions of our citizens.” That their crime was a real one, and that its potential results were as grave as Eisenhower said they were, “are facts that seem to me to be above contention.” Eisenhower pointed to another difficulty; if he commuted the sentence, the Rosenbergs would be eligible for parole in fifteen years.26
Still, the case bothered him. On June 16 he wrote John, in Korea, about it. He admitted that “it goes against the grain to avoid interfering where a woman is to receive capital punishment.” But he felt there were two good reasons not to go soft. First, “in this instance it is the woman who is the strong and recalcitrant character; the man is the weak one. She has obviously been the leader in everything they did in the spy ring.” The second reason was that if he commuted Ethel’s sentence while letting Julius die, “then from here on the Soviets would simply recruit their spies from among women.”27
By June 19, with the Rosenbergs scheduled to die that evening, the White House had an avalanche of mail from around the world, while demonstrators marched around the White House carrying signs pleading for clemency. Inside the White House, at a Cabinet meeting, Eisenhower confessed that he was “impressed by all the honest doubt” expressed in the letters he had received. He said he could not remember a time in his life when he felt more in need of help from someone more powerful than he. Brownell, worried that the President might weaken, said that “the Communists are just out to prove they can bring enough pressure . . . to enable people to get away with espionage. . . . I’ve always wanted you to look at evidence that wasn’t usable in court showing the Rosenbergs were the head and center of an espionage ring here in direct contact with the Russians—the prime espionage ring in the country.”28 Eisenhower then issued a statement declining to intervene. In it, he assured the world that the Rosenbergs “have received the benefit of every safeguard which American justice can provide.”29 That evening, just before sunset, the Rosenbergs were electrocuted.
• •
In Eisenhower’s view, the complaints by his aides about his refusal to exercise real leadership, as evidenced by his continuing appeasement of McCarthy and his refusal to stand by his guns on the tariff or the generators, were misdirected. They were watching the periphery, while he concentrated on the main battles. These included taxes, the budget, the war in Korea, the level of defense spending, foreign aid, and the general problem of world peace. On all these momentous issues, Eisenhower insisted, he provided firm, direct, and, most of all, effective leadership.30 He used all the weapons at his command, including private meetings with congressional leaders, his persuasive powers with the Cabinet, patronage, and his ability to mold public opinion through his news conferences and speeches. He left no doubt where he stood on any of the issues he felt were important, and he got his way—despite intense opposition—on every one of them.
Taxes are a problem for every President, of course, but they were especially irksome for Eisenhower because of Republican insistence that they be cut, at once, regardless of the size of the deficit. To that end, seventy-seven-year-old Congressman Daniel Reed of New York, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, had introduced a bill (H.R. 1) to advance from January 1, 1954, to July 1, 1953, a scheduled elimination of the 11 percent increase in personal income taxes adopted because of the Korean War. He also announced his intention to let the Korean War excess-profits tax expire as scheduled on June 30, 1953. These two measures would cost the government some $3 billion in revenue. Eisenhower repeated over and over that he would not allow a tax cut until he had a balanced budget; he wanted to postpone the cut in excise taxes and to extend the 11 percent increase in income taxes.
The battle lines were clearly drawn. “I used every possible reason, argument, and device,” Eisenhower later recalled, “and every kind of personal and indirect contact to bring Chairman Reed to my way of thinking.”31 Nothing worked. Eisenhower made it plain to other Republican congressmen that if they wanted their share of the patronage, they would have to give him their votes on taxes. That brought a few members around. Eisenhower asked Taft to use his influence, which the senator—reluctantly—did. In July, Eisenhower finally got what he wanted.
Part of his success was due to his promise to bring down federal spending. That was the argument that had moved Taft. The senator was therefore appalled when, at a Legislative Leaders’ Meeting on April 30, Eisenhower outlined his budget for the coming fiscal year. Although it made heavy cuts in defense, they were not enough to satisfy Taft; he objected strongly to the continuation of foreign aid at levels only slightly less than those of Truman; he refused to believe that more cuts could not be made and the first Republican budget in twenty years come out balanced.
Red-faced, raising his voice, snapping out his words, Taft declared, “I can’t express the deepness of my disappointment at the program the Administration presented today.” As Eisenhower recounted in his diary, “[Taft] accused the security council of merely adopting the Truman strategy and, by a process of nicking here and chipping there, built up savings which he classed as ‘puny.’ He predicted that acceptance by the Congress of any such program would insure the decisive defeat of the Republican party in 1954. He said that not only could he not support the program, but that he would have to go on public record as fighting and opposing it.” Eisenhower found himself “astonished at the demagogic nature of his tirade, because not once did he mention the security of the United States . . . He simply wanted expenditures reduced, regardless.”32
In fact, Taft had discussed security, extensively and directly. He said, “With all due respect to the National Security Council, they don’t know any more than I do.” He said he had no confidence in the people who recommended such high military expenditures, and reminded Eisenhower that Bradley had testified in early 1950 that $13.5 billion was sufficient for defense, and now three years later Bradley was saying that $50 billion was not enough. Taft wanted a “complete reconsideration” of the entire military program. He knew that the NSC relied on the JCS for its opinions, and those JCS people, “they can’t change.” There had to be a less costly way to defend the country, Taft said, and he wanted “a complete resurvey by the best military people who are not already committed.” Why, for example, should the United States be paying for a land army in Germany when no one expected to fight a land war there? Taft admitted that he did not know the answers, but insisted that they “must be studied.”
Taft had made a solid presentation on the question of national security. Eisenhower did not hear him. Eisenhower could not hear anyone who was advocating less spending on national defense than he was, partly because the clamor from the other side—demanding more spending on the military—was so much louder; partly, too, because Eisenhower was who he was. He had watched MacArthur beg FDR for more defense spending in the thirties; he had seen the results of FDR’s refusal to do so on the battlefield of Kasserine; he would never allow his country to be caught unprepared again. But as a professional soldier, he knew that the Pentagon could meet its responsibilities with far less money than his civilian critics (save for Taft) said it needed. The battles Eisenhower had to fight were with those who wanted more, not less, spending; thus Taft’s case was one Eisenhower could not hear.
Or so he said in his diary. At the time, he heard it well enough. But he lost his temper when Taft summed up by threatening to withdraw his support on taxes if Eisenhower did not cut his projected defense spending. Humphrey, fearing an explosion as he watched Eisenhower’s face flush red, jumped in with a plea for Taft to be reasonable. He pointed to the difficulties inherent in the situation. He got Taft to arguing over figures. For half an hour, they argued.
Finally Eisenhower broke in. “Let’s go back,” he said. Looking directly at Taft, he continued. “The essentials of our global strategy are not too difficult to understand.” Europe must not fall; we can’t take it over; we must make it stronger. “Next, the Middle East. That’s half of the oil resources. We can’t let it go to Russia.” Southeast Asia was another critical point; we had to support the French in Vietnam. Taft’s idea about relying exclusively on atomic weapons, based in the United States, brought from Eisenhower a scornful comment: “Reprisal alone gives us no assurance of security.” America had to maintain a position of strength, or the Russians “will take these over gradually without fighting.” He then gave Taft a detailed explanation of his defense policy. Eisenhower defended the NSC, saying, “It has the competency that any group could have by living with it day by day and constant study. They don’t claim any more than that.”
Finally, a simple conclusion: “I cannot endanger the security of my country.”33 And the meeting ended. Eisenhower commented in his diary that Taft did not have “considered judgment,” because “he attempts to discuss weighty, serious, and even critical matters in such an ill-tempered and violent fashion.” And, in a telling judgment on the subject of self-control, Eisenhower said of Taft, “I do not see how he can possibly expect . . . to influence people when he has no more control over his temper [than that].”34
• •
Aside from the basic question of war or peace, the most important problem any modern President faces is the size of the defense budget. Everything else—taxes, the size of the deficit, the rate of unemployment, the inflation rate, relations with America’s allies and with the Soviet Union—is directly related to how much DOD spends. All of Eisenhower’s major goals—peace, lower taxes, a balanced budget, no inflation—were dependent upon his cutting the defense budget.
He knew it and was determined to do it. Indeed, an important factor in his decision to enter politics was his unhappiness with Truman’s defense policy. As Taft had noted, spending for the military went up and down between 1945 and 1953 at a dizzying pace. On the eve of the Korean War, Truman had reduced defense to $13.5 billion. Eisenhower had opposed such drastic cuts, and often said that he personally believed there never would have been a Korean War if Truman had not demobilized so rapidly as to force the Army to withdraw its divisions from South Korea in 1948. By 1952, Truman was projecting more than $50 billion for defense, and had committed the United States to building up to maximum strength—to a near total-war footing—by 1954, the so-called “year of maximum danger.” (By 1954, according to the Pentagon, the Soviet Union would have a hydrogen bomb and possess the means of delivery.)
Eisenhower told Republican leaders that this target date business was “pure rot.” He said, “I have always fought the idea of X units by Y date. I am not going to be stampeded by someone coming along with a damn trick formula of ‘so much by this date.’ ”35 What he wanted, instead, was a steady buildup, based on what the country could afford. When he announced his program, however, all the services objected strenuously. The Air Force, which had been scheduled to get the largest share of the Truman buildup, was especially upset, and not in the least hesitant in going public with its criticisms. Air Force objections got wide publicity. The Air Force argued that it had to have 141 groups by 1954 or it could not meet its responsibilities.
“I’m damn tired of Air Force sales programs,” Eisenhower told the Republican leaders. “In 1946 they argued that if we can have seventy groups, we’ll guarantee security for ever and ever and ever.” Now they come up with this “trick figure of 141. They sell it. Then you have to abide by it or you’re treasonous.” Eisenhower said he had told Wilson to put his house in order, to force the generals and admirals to keep their mouths shut. “I will not have anyone in Defense who wants to sell the idea of a larger and larger force in being.” The main Air Force spokesman on Capitol Hill, Senator Symington, was charging that Eisenhower’s program would leave the United States open to a Russian strategic bombing campaign. Eisenhower thought that too was “pure rot.” “We pulverized Germany,” he reminded the congressmen, “but their actual rate of production was as big at the end as at the beginning. It’s amazing what people can do under pressure. The idea that our economy will be paralyzed is a figment of Stuart Symington’s imagination.”36 Eisenhower looked at the problem from the other end—he pointed to the effect on the economy if the United States continued to build toward Truman’s target date. What would happen after 1954? Could the country simply shut down the plants that had geared up to produce all those tanks, ships, and planes?
Still the politicians objected to Eisenhower’s cuts. Surely the Air Force knew better than anyone else what its needs were. Eisenhower said that was “bunk.” He reminded the congressmen that “I’ve served with those people who know all the answers—they just won’t get down and face the dirty facts of life.”37 The politicians were not convinced. How could they, mere civilians, argue with the Pentagon? Eisenhower replied that he knew the Pentagon as well as any man living; he knew how ingrained was the tendency to overstate the case, to ask for more than was really necessary. He dismissed as nonsense the idea that anyone could predict the “year of maximum danger.” He insisted that “we’re not in a moment of danger, we’re in an age of danger.”38
These remarks were made in private meetings, but Eisenhower was just as emphatic in public. At an April 23 news conference, Richard Harkness of NBC asked him if the “stretch out” in defense spending meant that he was looking to a ten-year buildup. “Well,” Eisenhower responded, “I would object to ten years just as much as I object to ’54. Anybody who bases his defense on his ability to predict the day and the hour of attack is crazy. If you are going on the defensive, you have got to get a level of preparation you can sustain over the years . . . We have got to devise and develop a defensive program we can carry forward.”39 A week later, when the subject came up again, Eisenhower gave a history lecture. The situation in the 1950s, he said, was not at all like the situation in June of 1944 when “I went across the Channel.” At that time, he said, “We picked the day. We knew when we wanted our maximum force. We knew the buildup we wanted. We knew exactly what we were up against.” None of that was true in 1953.40
Eisenhower had cut Truman’s request for new spending by nearly $10 billion, the great bulk of the savings coming from defense. Still more cuts were necessary to balance the budget. Wilson was unhappy with this prospect; so was Dulles. The Secretary of State warned the President that “we don’t know yet what we’re going to do in Korea—or in the whole Far East, for that matter.” He wanted the whole business of cutting back re-examined.41 Other Cabinet members thought that more money could be squeezed out of the domestic budget. Humphrey was practically Eisenhower’s only supporter—he told his colleagues that the domestic entitlement programs were “untouchable.” So far, he warned, the Eisenhower cuts in defense had only “scratched the surface. We have to do a hell of a lot more. . . . And this means surgery.”
Wilson was startled. “That means you want at least $10 billion more cut out of defense . . .” he said, unbelieving. Humphrey used images that Wilson could understand in his reply: “Charlie, that’s right. You just got to get out the best damn streamlined model you ever did in your life. . . . This means a brand-new model—we can’t just patch up the old jalopy. . . . It’s just like reorganizing a whole business. It’s got to be done from top to bottom.”42
Eisenhower had told Wilson to take control of the Pentagon. When it became obvious that Wilson would not or could not do so, Eisenhower intervened directly. He wrote long letters to old friends in the armed services, explaining his position and asking for their help. If they felt they could not support him, he asked for at least their silence. To Tooey Spaatz, his wartime comrade who was in retirement and writing critical articles about the cuts in Air Force appropriations, Eisenhower wrote a heartfelt plea. The President asked Spaatz to come in and express his views privately, rather than going public with them.43 Eisenhower told Admiral Radford that when he replaced Bradley as chairman of the JCS in August, he wanted Radford to issue a statement to the effect that with his confirmation as chairman “will come a divorce from exclusive identification with the Navy.” He told Radford to stress that his loyalty would be to the Defense Department as a whole, and that he would henceforth serve as “the champion of all the services, governed by the single criterion of what is best for the United States.”44
An integral part of Eisenhower’s defense posture was reliance upon allies. That meant specifically that he wanted more funds for MSA, so that he could distribute military hardware to the Koreans, to the NATO allies, and to other friends around the world. Eisenhower believed that it was cheaper for the United States to pay the costs of keeping a British or a German force on the Elbe River, or a French force in Vietnam, than it was to keep an American force there. Here he ran into the firm opposition of a majority of Republicans in Congress. They were tired of the Marshall Plan, tired of foreign aid, tired of “giving away” America’s money. It was in this area, rather than in Pentagon appropriations, that they saw an opportunity to cut spending. Like Taft, they wanted a “Fortress America” program, although unlike Taft they were unwilling to reduce the size of the fortress. To Eisenhower, this was just another instance of congressional stupidity. “Consider British bases,” he told the Republican leaders. From Britain, the United States could strike the Soviet Union with B-47 bombers instead of having to use B-52s. He reminded them of the “huge difference” in initial costs, in operation, and in maintenance.45
Eisenhower found that trying to talk sense to Congress about defense and MSA appropriations was frustrating. But he seldom lost his temper or his patience, and he kept after it. In the privacy of the Cabinet room, he did not hesitate to complain. By late May of 1953, his Administration was coming close to exceeding the statutory debt limit. Congress would have to raise the limit, but those same congressmen who wanted to spend more on defense while simultaneously cutting taxes were hesitating to do so. Eisenhower asked his Cabinet, “If we exceed that debt limit, who goes to jail?” Humphrey replied, “We’ve got to go to Congress.” “Oh!” Eisenhower exclaimed. “That’s worse!”46
But go to Congress he did, and he got the debt limit raised, and he managed to get most of what he asked for on MSA, and the Pentagon budget did go down. Together with maintaining the existing level of taxes, these were major triumphs. Eisenhower, more than any other individual, was responsible for winning them.
• •
The most obvious way for Eisenhower to reduce defense spending was to reduce the level of tension in the world. Since 1945 the United States and the Soviet Union had been hurling the most horrendous charges at each other as they built and maintained armed forces designed to fight the battle of Armageddon. Eisenhower’s election and Stalin’s death provided an opportunity for a fresh start. Stalin’s immediate successor, Georgi Malenkov, seized the chance. On March 15, he declared that there was no existing dispute between the two countries that “cannot be decided by peaceful means, on the basis of mutual understanding.” The Soviet propaganda machine then went into high gear on a “peace offensive.” Eisenhower had to respond. He had a sense of urgency about the need to do so, because he had just read a CIA report on the world reaction to the Soviet moves. “It begins to look to me,” he told Dulles, “that if I am to make a speech on this question of peace, I should do it soon.”47 Dulles was opposed—he did not believe a word of what Malenkov was saying—but Eisenhower insisted.
In late March, Eisenhower met with Hughes in the Oval Office. After going over some routine matters, Eisenhower “began talking with the air of a man whose thoughts . . . were fast veering toward a conclusion.” The President paced the room, speaking slowly and forcefully. “Look,” Eisenhower said, “I am tired . . . of just plain indictments of the Soviet regime. . . . Just one thing matters: what have we got to offer the world? . . . If we cannot say these things—A, B, C, D, E, F, G, just like that—then we really have nothing to give, except just another speech. For what? Malenkov isn’t going to be frightened with speeches. What are we trying to achieve?” Hughes recalled the scene vividly—Eisenhower’s head “martially high,” his “strong mouth tight, the jaw set—and the blue eyes agleam and intent.” Eisenhower “wheeled abruptly” toward Hughes and went on: “Here is what I would like to say. The jet plane that roars over your head costs three-quarters of a million dollars. That is more money than a man . . . is going to make in his lifetime. What world can afford this sort of thing for long? We are in an armaments race. Where will it lead us? At worst, to atomic warfare. At best, to robbing every people and nation on earth of the fruits of their own toil.”
Eisenhower said he wanted to see the resources of the world used to provide bread, butter, clothes, homes, hospitals, schools, “all the good and necessary things for decent living,” not more guns. To help bring that about, he wanted to make a speech that would not include the standard indictment of the Soviet Union. “The past speaks for itself. I am interested in the future. Both their government and ours now have new men in them. The slate is clean. Now let us begin talking to each other. And let us say what we’ve got to say so that every person on earth can understand it.”
Hughes injected a word of caution. He said he had just talked to Dulles about how the United States would react if the Communists accepted an armistice in Korea. Dulles had said he would be sorry, because “I don’t think we can get much out of a Korean settlement until we have shown—before all Asia—our clear superiority by giving the Chinese one hell of a licking.” Eisenhower’s head snapped around. He stared at Hughes. Then he said, “All right, then. If Mr. Dulles and all his sophisticated advisers really mean that they can not talk peace seriously, then I am in the wrong pew. For if it’s war we should be talking about, I know the people to give me advice on that—and they’re not in the State Department. Now either we cut out all this fooling around and make a serious bid for peace—or we forget the whole thing.”48
Eisenhower told Hughes, and C. D. Jackson, to get to work on a speech on peace. He monitored every word of the many drafts, often providing them with imagery and telling phrases. Over the next two weeks, they worked hard at it.
• •
The President’s eagerness to seek peace was based not only on his resistance to the cost of the arms race, but also on his horror at the thought of the amount of destructive force available to him. In 1948, when he was Army Chief of Staff, the American atomic arsenal contained two twenty-kiloton bombs. But following the Berlin blockade of that year, Truman had ordered a crash program to build more bombs. They had been built at a rate of nearly one per day, so that by the time Eisenhower became President, the arsenal had grown to sixteen hundred nuclear bombs. Although most of these weapons were relatively small atomic bombs, nevertheless the total destructive power was awesome. Construction was still going forward at the rate of almost one per day—and this under Eisenhower’s direct orders—but he felt a terrible unease about it all. His knowledge, not incidentally, was a major reason for his resistance to even greater defense expenditures, and for his scoffing at Symington and others who warned that the Soviets were getting ahead. In 1953 the Soviet Union had no nuclear weapons deployed operationally.I
• •
In early April, the Masters golf tournament took place at Augusta. On the Monday after the event, Eisenhower and Mamie, accompanied by Barbara and the grandchildren, flew down to Augusta. They stayed at Bobby Jones’s cottage. Eisenhower played a round of golf with the Masters’ winner, Ben Hogan, and in the evenings played bridge with his gang. Priscilla Slater was there to provide Mamie with company and a canasta partner. The gang was building a place for the Eisenhowers on the edge of the golf course; Slater noticed “Ike standing with David by the hand watching the tractor digging the foundation for Mamie’s cottage.” Senator Taft flew down for an afternoon of golf, but he had to quit because of a pain in his hip. Eisenhower did not feel well either. He had a persistent stomach upset that forced him to use a golf cart to get around.50
• •
On April 16, 1953, Eisenhower went to the Statler Hotel in Washington to give the American Society of Newspaper Editors the finest speech of his Presidency. He called it “The Chance for Peace.” Insofar as it was a response to the Soviet peace offensive, it was propaganda—eloquently put, but still propaganda. Eisenhower began by indicting the Soviets for their past actions. Following World War II, he said, when the United States followed the path of peace, the Soviets stayed on a war footing, which forced the free nations to rearm. But despite all Soviet provocations, the free world was still ready to seek peace. Eisenhower welcomed recent Soviet statements on the need for peace and said that he would believe they were sincere when the words were backed with deeds. Specific deeds, including the release of POWs held since 1945, a Soviet signature on an Austrian treaty, the conclusion of “an honorable armistice” in Korea, Indochina, and Malaya, agreement to a free and united Germany, and the “full independence of the East European nations.”
In return for such actions by the Russians, Eisenhower said he was prepared to conclude an arms-limitation agreement and to accept international control of atomic energy designed to “insure the prohibition of atomic weapons.” All this would be supervised by “a practical system of inspection under the United Nations.”
Eisenhower knew that most of his demands for proof were unacceptable to the Russians. Under no circumstances would they pull out of East Europe; the idea of German reunification gave them nightmares; they could not be expected to (or even be able to) call off the guerrilla warriors in Vietnam and Malaya; and their opposition to on-site inspections within the Soviet Union was implacable, and well known.
The specific charges, demands, and proposals in “The Chance for Peace,” in other words, were little more than a restatement of some of the oldest Cold War rhetoric. They were not what made the speech great. What did make it great was Eisenhower’s warning about the dangers and the cost of continuing the arms race.
“The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated,” he declared. “The worst is atomic war. The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples.” Then he added up the price: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
Suddenly Eisenhower began perspiring. As the sweat beaded up on his face, he became so dizzy he feared he would faint. Then he was racked by chills. He reached forward and grabbed the podium with both hands to steady himself. He had had an intestinal attack the previous evening, and that morning Dr. Snyder had given him sedatives, but now the attack was worse than ever. With an effort of will, Eisenhower drew himself together, managed to concentrate on the text, and read on, skipping some passages so as to emphasize the important ones.
“This world in arms is not spending money alone,” he continued. “It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” He picked up his voice, looked out at his audience, and began ticking them off: “The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than thirty cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of sixty thousand population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.” Sweat was pouring from his brow, but he read on: “We pay for a single fighter plane with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than eight thousand people.”
Looking out again, he pronounced his judgment. “This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
Eisenhower’s conclusion, pointing to the alternative, was as splendid as his evocation of the costs of the arms race. He said that if the Soviets showed by deeds that they too were ready for peace, the United States would devote “a substantial percentage of the savings achieved by disarmament to a fund for world aid and reconstruction . . . to assist all peoples to know the blessings of productive freedom. The monuments to this new kind of war would be these: roads and schools, hospitals and homes, food and health.”51
After the speech, Eisenhower took the time and spent the energy to throw out the first ball at the Washington Senators’ opening-day ball game (he really was a tough old soldier; his stomach felt as if it was on fire). He then made a short talk in North Carolina. Finally he flew to Augusta. There Dr. Snyder gave him another sedative and put him to bed. The next morning he woke to find that the reception to his speech, in the Western world, was overwhelming. The American press outdid itself in praising him; so did the British and Continental newspapers; messages from American embassies around the world reported the greatest enthusiasm to any statement by an American since George Marshall outlined the European Recovery Program. The Indian ambassador to Egypt said it was a wonderful speech that could not have been made by any other living man. Chip Bohlen, in Moscow, was told by the ambassador from Burma that the speech was in the “best tradition of the Founding Fathers of the United States.”52 The State Department, recognizing a winner, distributed copies all over the world, in dozens of languages.
Actually the head of the State Department had never been happy with the speech. Dulles could see no reason to reach out to the Russians, and had told Eisenhower so. Indeed it was at Dulles’ insistence that Eisenhower had asked for so many obviously impossible concessions from the Russians as “proof” of their good intentions. Dulles was especially concerned about the Far East, where he feared the President would be willing to accept a simple battlefield armistice in Korea rather than press on for the unification of the country and the settlement of the other wars going on in Asia. In the context of his speech, Eisenhower had indeed demanded an Asia-wide peace, but the spirit of the address was otherwise—it seemed clear to most observers that Eisenhower would grasp at any conciliatory act by the Soviets as a meaningful gesture. There was much in “The Chance for Peace” that was pure propaganda, but the overall tone of the speech was so reasonable and moderate, Eisenhower’s sincerity so apparent, and his willingness to speak the blunt truth about the arms race in such vivid terms, and the reception of the speech so favorable, that the Soviets had to respond.
While Eisenhower waited for them to do so, he recuperated from his stomach troubles in Augusta. The gang was there, and he played ten rubbers of bridge the second night. The following day he played eighteen holes of golf, making sixteen bogeys and two pars, which was relatively good scoring for him. He told Slater he “wouldn’t have missed the day for anything.” That evening Slater talked to him about getting a herd of purebred Angus heifers for the farm in Gettysburg. Eisenhower liked the idea, so long as it was “worked out on a strictly business basis.” They agreed to do it, with the idea that after his retirement in 1957 Eisenhower would take up full-time cattle ranching.53
• •
When Eisenhower returned to Washington, Korea was at the center of his attention. The Communists said they were ready to begin again the armistice talks with the U.N. team at Panmunjom. Dulles wanted to reject the offer. At an NSC April 8 meeting, he told Eisenhower that “it was now quite possible to secure a much more satisfactory settlement in Korea than a mere armistice at the thirty-eighth parallel, which would leave a divided Korea.” Dulles believed that if a military armistice was not followed by a “political settlement,” meaning the unification of Korea, the United States would have to break the armistice.
Eisenhower would have none of that. He told Dulles “it will be impossible to call off the armistice and to go to war again in Korea. The American people will never stand for such a move.” Dulles persisted. At least, he said, let us tell the Communists that unless Korea were divided along the waist, rather than at the 38th parallel, “we will call off the armistice.” Wilson supported Dulles, and added that he thought it shameful that the South Koreans had not been brought into the negotiations. Eisenhower admitted that the Communists “will void the armistice with impunity whenever they think it convenient,” but he had a “strong reaction” against his announcing that the Americans would do so.54 Besides, he had already told Dulles that he personally would regard the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners as a “test of good faith on the part of the Soviets.”55 On April 20, Operation Little Switch, the first exchange of prisoners, began. Within a week, plenary talks between the Communists and the U.N. negotiating team were resumed.
Dulles was not the only free-world leader who was upset at the sudden prospect of peace. Syngman Rhee was desperate to reunify his country and had objected strenuously to any armistice that would leave Chinese armies in North Korea. If the United States signed such an agreement, Rhee told Eisenhower, then South Korea would ask her allies to get out of the country, except for those who were willing to join in a drive north to the Yalu. Eisenhower, in a carefully drafted reply of April 23, warned Rhee bluntly that “any such action by your government could only result in disaster for your country, obliterating all that has been gained at such sacrifice by our peoples.” Eisenhower said that the U.N. had entered Korea in order to drive the North Korean invaders back across the 38th parallel, which had been accomplished. He added that while it was true that the U.S. and the U.N. were committed to the unification of Korea, he claimed that they had never agreed to the use of force to achieve this objective (which was not true; when MacArthur crossed the 38th parallel in September 1950, intending to drive to the Yalu and reunify the country, he did so with the full and formal backing of both the U.S. government and the U.N.).56
In Panmunjom, meanwhile, both sides were negotiating seriously, taking new positions on the complex problem of Chinese and North Korean POWs who did not want to return home. The Indian government was proposing a compromise solution that appealed to both sides. But not to Dulles. He flew to Karachi for talks with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. This trip has since become famous, because during the talks Dulles supposedly told Nehru that the United States might feel compelled “to use atomic weapons if a truce could not be arranged.”57 In fact, no such direct warning was made, nor was it necessary. The full text of Dulles’ report to Eisenhower on his conversation with Nehru read: “Nehru brought up Korean armistice, referring particularly to my statement of preceding day, that if no (repeat no) armistice occurred hostilities might become more intense. He said if this happened it difficult to know what end might be. He urged withdrawal our armistice proposals as inconsistent with the Indian resolutions. He made no (repeat no) alternate proposal. He brought up again my reference to intensified operations, but I made no (repeat no) comment and allowed the topic to drop.”58
Dulles did not need to make any direct threats, much less depend on Nehru to pass them along to the Chinese. The Communists already knew that Eisenhower had a nuclear option; they knew that his patience was limited; they knew that he was under pressure to widen the war; they knew that the Americans had atomic warheads in Okinawa.59 On June 4, the Chinese presented a POW proposal that was in substantial accord with the latest U.N. offer. Peace was in sight.
Rhee was furious. He had already told Eisenhower that a simple military armistice would mean “a death sentence for Korea without protest.” He proposed, instead, a simultaneous withdrawal of both the Chinese and U.N. forces in Korea, a mutual-defense pact between South Korea and the United States, and an increase in military aid. If this program was unacceptable, he begged Eisenhower to allow the Koreans to continue the fighting, for this “is the universal preference of the Korean people to any divisive armistice or peace.”60 In a long and sympathetic reply, Eisenhower told Rhee that “the moment has now come” for peace. “The enemy has proposed an armistice which involves a clear abandonment of the fruits of aggression.” As the cease-fire line would follow the front lines, which were slightly north of the 38th parallel, Rhee would emerge from the conflict with his territory intact, “indeed somewhat enlarged.” Eisenhower pledged that the United States “will not renounce its efforts by all peaceful means to effect the unification of Korea,” agreed to a mutual-defense pact, and promised substantial reconstruction aid for South Korea. He concluded, “Even the thought of a separation at this critical hour would be a tragedy. We must remain united.”61
• •
The Old Guard, like Rhee and Dulles, was upset. With its close identification with the China lobby and its persistent emphasis on Asia first, the Old Guard wanted victory, not armistice. Members were heard to mutter that if Truman had signed the conditions Eisenhower was willing to accept, they would have moved to impeach him. One of the Old Guard’s chief concerns was Chiang Kai-shek. Europeans were saying that once an armistice had been achieved, the problem of the Chinese seat on the U.N. Security Council could be settled by replacing the Nationalist with the Communist Chinese. To prevent this, on May 28 the Senate Appropriations Committee reported out a bill with a rider barring any American financial contribution to the U.N. if the Red Chinese were seated.
Foreign policy was an area in which Eisenhower would not appease the Old Guard. However muddled his leadership on McCarthyism or generators, he was clear and forceful and effective as a leader on foreign affairs. Although Styles Bridges, chairman of the committee, told the President that all Republican senators supported the rider, and no Democrat would dare to oppose it, Eisenhower was determined to stop it.
Eisenhower’s own thoughts about what to do concerning China ran in the opposite direction of those of the Old Guard. He thought that with the end of the hostilities, the United States ought to re-examine its China policy. Keeping China out of the U.N., and refusing to recognize the existence of the Communist government, made no sense to him. But the art of leadership includes the art of the possible, and Eisenhower believed that the American public was not ready to think about a new relationship with China. He would not, however, allow the Old Guard to achieve one of its major objectives, the destruction of the U.N., especially not over the question of who sat in China’s seat on the Security Council.62
Eisenhower wrote Nixon a three-page letter strongly opposing the rider and asking Nixon to present his views to the Senate.63 Not satisfied with that approach, he then called a special meeting of the Republican leaders in Congress. “I am distressed,” he told them, “that this rider might become law. I oppose it because I believe that the United States cannot properly serve notice on the United Nations in such a manner, and more fundamentally, that the United States cannot live alone.” The U.N., he said, was “essential because global war is now unthinkable.” He warned that “it is not wise to tie our own hands irrevocably about affairs in advance.” He reminded the congressmen that back in 1945, “Germany was our deadly enemy; who could then have foreseen that in only a few years it would become a friendly associate?” Perhaps China too might someday become America’s ally. Slowly, painfully, the Republican leaders backed down. Finally Knowland suggested a resolution that would have no legal effect and cut off no funds, but which would express congressional disapproval of seating Red China. That was meaningless enough to be acceptable to Eisenhower, who thereby managed, as he put it, “to preserve the executive branch from congressional encroachment.”64
• •
Korea was not the only place in Asia where Communists were fighting the forces of the free world. In the Philippines, the Huks were challenging the government. In Malaya, the British were fighting insurgents. And in Vietnam, the French were engaged in a costly struggle with the Vietminh. It was an axiom of American political thinking at this time that all these insurrections were part of a master conspiracy directed by the Kremlin, and that the Kremlin could, if it wished, call them all off. Dulles was a leading spokesman for this view. Eisenhower did not disagree with it, but he did not accept Dulles’ contention that all these wars had to end before there could be a meaningful peace in Korea. The President thought that the way to achieve peace in Vietnam was not to link it to Korea but to strengthen the French forces there while simultaneously offering a full and genuine independence to the people of Indochina.
The French were using the war in Vietnam to blackmail the United States. Paris argued that the cost of the war precluded any increases in the French contribution to NATO, and they made French ratification of EDC contingent upon receiving additional military aid. Eisenhower was willing to provide such aid—indeed he had already asked Congress for an additional $385 million for that purpose—but he was convinced that increased military pressure alone would not solve the problem. So, while he was agreeing to surreptitiously furnish the French with “sanitized” American aircraft for use in Vietnam,65 he was also instructing Ambassador Dillon to tell the French that there were two things they had to do. First, find “a forceful and inspirational leader” to take charge of military operations. Second, make a “clear and unequivocal announcement . . . that France seeks self-rule for Indochina and that practical political freedom will be an accomplished fact as soon as victory against the Communists is won.” Such a declaration, he said, “would place this tragic conflict in an appealing perspective” and end the accusation that the French were fighting nothing more than a colonial war.66
The French, however, had no intention of giving up Vietnam. They knew that, despite what the Americans thought, their enemies were in the interior of Vietnam, not in Peking or Moscow, and they were not fighting the war in order to leave Vietnam after they had won it. When Eisenhower was SACEUR, he had pleaded with the French to make such a “clear and unequivocal” statement about their intention to grant full independence to Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia; they had not responded then; they would not respond now. The war went on.
• •
On June 8, the Communists at Panmunjom agreed to the voluntary repatriation of POWs, with the provision that the processing of the prisoners would be observed by representatives of both sides. All that now remained was to establish a cease-fire line. That, and bringing Rhee around.
Rhee was in a strong position. Two-thirds of the battle line was manned by his troops. He could upset any armistice agreement by marching north. Further, his soldiers were the guards at the POW compounds. He had the sympathy of many Americans. And he had the apparent complete support of his own people. When the announcement of the POW agreement was made in Seoul, some 100,000 South Koreans took to the streets in a massive demonstration demanding a march to the north. The South Korean assembly rejected the proposed truce by a vote of 129 to 0.67
On June 19, Eisenhower was holding a regular Cabinet meeting. Dodge was reporting on the budget. An aide came in with a message. Eisenhower read it, then went into a huddle with Dulles and Cutler. Rhee had released some twenty-five thousand POWs, Chinese and Korean, and they had quickly scattered over the countryside. This was a direct violation of the armistice agreements, and inevitably made the Chinese ask “whether the United States was able to live up to any agreement to which the South Koreans might be a party.”68 Eisenhower turned to his Cabinet, reported on what he had just learned, and commented that “we are coming to the point where it is completely impossible.” He said he could not understand the “mental processes of the Oriental. One thing I learned in five years out there is that we don’t know to what they will react.” Rhee, in Eisenhower’s view, was committing his people to national suicide. Dulles thought Rhee had a legitimate point of view and suggested, “Let’s merely hold the line; try to carry on what we’ve done the last two years,” that is, continue the war. Eisenhower objected: “This would be a complete surrender to his blackmail.” Wilson said that was the other side of the “Oriental mind—he doesn’t consider it blackmail. After all, we dumped him out of the truce talks.”
Eisenhower said he would be tempted to follow a policy of non-response to Rhee’s threats “if there were some hope—like a palace revolt” against Rhee. But “what hope have we got?” And he warned that “if Rhee succeeds now, his prestige in Korea goes up,” and he would be even more difficult to deal with. The Cabinet then discussed the possibilities of getting rid of Rhee. Eisenhower wanted to know about the attitude of the ROK chief of staff. Would he support a palace coup, or was he loyal to Rhee? Cutler thought the ROK generals would come to their senses and overthrow Rhee. Humphrey said the Americans should get an advance commitment from them. Wilson warned that “we can’t count on what they say.”
“We’ve got to figure out our next step,” Eisenhower declared. “We can’t sit in a state of suspended animation.” Then he turned to Dulles and asked, “What about Allen [Dulles]?” Lodge jumped in to say that he had ridden on an airplane with General MacArthur that day, and informed the Cabinet that “MacArthur thinks Rhee will be killed within two weeks.” “What’s his basis for saying that?” Eisenhower asked. Lodge replied that MacArthur had told him that “after the emotion dies down, the more reflective elements [in the ROK] will act.” In that case, said Wilson, “let events take their course.” Eisenhower worried about the American troops in Korea, one of whom was his only son. Could they be supplied and maintained independently of the ROK? It appeared that they could be. Humphrey said that the “only thing for us to do is what we can to keep face.” Eisenhower burst into laughter—“Imagine,” he said, “Westerners saving face!”
Dulles had the last word. He gravely informed Eisenhower that “this situation is inherent in the type of foreign policy we’re trying to pursue.” Failure to fight the Communists everywhere, failure to drive them back behind the Yalu, failure to support Chiang in an offensive on the mainland, failure to go for an all-out victory in Vietnam, all coupled with Eisenhower’s glittering promises in “The Chance for Peace,” made it impossible for the United States to pursue a clear and direct policy of resistance to Communism. The implication of Dulles’ remarks was clear—break off the truce talks and go for victory.69
Eisenhower would not consider that. Nor did he send out any orders to have Rhee assassinated. Instead, he sent Walter Robertson, an Assistant Secretary of State, to Seoul to try to talk reason to Rhee. Eisenhower also sent a stern warning to Rhee. Reminding the South Korean President that the Koreans had agreed to give the U.N. Command “authority over all land, sea, and air forces of the ROK during the period of the present state of hostilities,” Eisenhower said that the release of the prisoners “constitutes a clear violation of this assurance and creates an impossible situation.” Eisenhower told Rhee that “unless you are prepared immediately and unequivocally to accept the authority of the U.N. Command to conduct the present hostilities and to bring them to a close, it will be necessary to effect another arrangement.”70 Robertson, acting under Eisenhower’s direction, told Rhee what those “other arrangements” would be—a withdrawal of American troops, no more military support for the ROK, no reconstruction funds for South Korea, no mutual-defense pact.
• •
Eisenhower’s June 19 Cabinet meeting illustrated well the diversity and scope of his problems. On that date, he discussed the Rosenberg case, a tax bill (with Congressman Reed still insisting on cutting taxes, Eisenhower referred at one point to “Dr. Syngman Reed”), an upcoming New Jersey election, reorganization plans, patronage, problems with Secretary Benson’s farm policy, DOD appropriations, the leaks and squabbles among the JCS, whether or not to ask for a wiretapping bill, McCarthy, the State Department’s book-burning policy, and a half dozen other problems.
Small wonder that Eisenhower opened the next meeting, on June 26, by saying that he had just had a “week of trouble.” But in spite of all the frustration, he told the Cabinet that “long faces do not win battles.” He wanted his colleagues to remain optimistic and to keep their “faith in God and in themselves.” He said this was a “very real matter with me though it may seem obvious to others.”71 After the meeting, the Eisenhowers, joined by their daughter-in-law and grandchildren, went up to the remodeled Camp David for the weekend, where—Eisenhower later informed the press—they spent their time “very quietly, doing nothing.”72
I. Getting reliable facts and figures on the American nuclear arsenal was the most difficult part of the research for this book. This is the most closely guarded secret of the U.S. government. All Atomic Energy Commission reports to Eisenhower on the arsenal were given verbally. All references to numbers and size are deleted from every document in the NSC, Cabinet, Defense, and other papers in the Eisenhower Library. The figures used here are taken from the Brookings Institution, which does not cite its sources.49