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.”1 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 for Chinese Communists, ChiNats for Chinese Nationalists.) A week later, ChiCom troops captured Ichiang, an island seven miles north of the Tachens. On the mainland, meanwhile, the ChiComs were improving their jet airfields opposite Formosa. Eisenhower decided that “the time had come to draw the line.”2 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, and with Eisenhower’s decision to use the Seventh Fleet to assist in the evacuation of the Tachens. But Dulles wanted to include Quemoy and Matsu in the resolution, 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.”3
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. Eisenhower wanted Congress’s backing. He was not going to expose himself to the kind of criticism that Taft and other Republicans had made against Truman for entering the Korean War without consulting Congress. 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.”4
On January 21, Eisenhower met in the Oval Office with the JCS, Dulles, and Wilson. He outlined the resolution he proposed to ask Congress to pass. He gave four reasons for the resolution: (1) its logical purpose; (2) “to tell the ChiComs of our intentions”; (3) “to dispel doubts as to whether we were acting on constitutional grounds”; and (4) to bolster the morale of the ChiNats. Admiral Robert Carney, the Chief of Naval Operations, then protested that the resolution was merely a cover for what was in fact a retreat. Carney did not want to abandon the Tachens. Citing the difficulties inherent in trying to evacuate the forty thousand ChiNats on the Tachens, Carney said it would be easier and wiser to defend them. That would involve using the Seventh Fleet, as the ChiNats were incapable of defending the Tachens alone. Eisenhower told Carney that there was no relationship between the Tachens and Formosa, that he was not going to change his mind, and that Carney should get to work on evacuation plans.5
The following day, Eisenhower talked to Hagerty about the public-relations aspects of the resolution. He said this was a “big step” and he wanted it done right. That morning, Eisenhower said, he had ordered three aircraft carriers from Pearl Harbor to join the Seventh Fleet, and told other forces in the Pacific to prepare to go to Formosa if necessary. Eisenhower declared, according to Hagerty’s diary entry, that he “had made up his mind to not let the ChiComs get away with murder in the China Sea.” Nor would he “sit idly by and permit the Reds to build up any large forces on the mainland for an invasion of either Formosa or the Pescadores.” Eisenhower said he would “not draw any definite line as such,” and explained to Hagerty: “We are deliberately not going to draw a specific line because we do not believe in giving blueprints to the Communists on just what we will or will not do.”6
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. The President did not, would not, say.7
After dispatching the message, Eisenhower worked to build support for it. He wrote Henry Luce, outlining his thinking and asking for a Time-Life endorsement.8 He talked to Senator Saltonstall, who wanted to know if the resolution “amounted in effect to an advance declaration of war” and asked whether Chiang had a “clear title” to Formosa, which the ChiComs claimed was a part of China. Defending Formosa might put the United States smack in the middle of the Chinese civil war, and defending Quemoy and Matsu certainly would have that effect. Resisting Communist expansion was one thing; involvement in a civil war something else again.
“You know, Senator,” Eisenhower answered, “sometimes we are captains of history.” Formosa was “part of a great island barrier we have erected in the Pacific against Communist advance. We are not going to let it be broken.” Therefore, “I don’t think we should worry about any cloudiness to any title . . . We just can’t permit the ChiNats to sit in Formosa and wait until they are attacked . . . If we see the ChiComs building up their forces for an invasion of Formosa we are going to have to go in and break it up.” As to whether he already had the power to act, even without the resolution, Eisenhower said that no one had ever clearly defined the President’s constitutional powers in such a situation, and explained that his real reason for the message was “to serve notice on the Communists that they’re not going to be able to get away with it.”9
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. The Senate, however, was another matter. It insisted on holding hearings. Initially, these went badly for the Administration, because General Ridgway went to the Hill to testify and took the opportunity to once again denounce Eisenhower’s New Look. Ridgway said that because of the New Look, the Army was just too small to defend Formosa. Eisenhower was so angry that he told Dulles over the telephone that the time had come to fire Ridgway. Dulles cautioned him against precipitate action, and Eisenhower agreed to talk to Ridgway privately.10 Partly because of Ridgway’s testimony, mainly because of fears of involvement in the Chinese civil war, Senator Herbert Lehman of New York introduced an amendment to the resolution, drawing the line back of Quemoy and Matsu and confining the use of American forces to the defense of Formosa and the Pescadores. Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Administration went all out to defeat the amendment.
Publicly, Eisenhower had Hagerty release a statement in the President’s name that assured the Senate that American forces would be used “purely for defensive purposes” on the basis of a presidential decision “which he would take and the responsibility for which he has not delegated.” Eisenhower also said that he would not commit American troops to the defense of Quemoy and Matsu unless he was convinced that an attack against the islands was merely a prelude to an assault against Formosa itself. He had not “made that decision” and would not make it until he knew “the circumstances surrounding any given attack.”11
After three days of debate the Lehman Amendment was rejected, 74 to 13. 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.
• •
The Formosa Doctrine, as Eisenhower called it, confused more than it clarified—exactly as he intended. Chou called it a “war message” and reiterated the ChiComs’ intent to liberate Formosa. Chiang was not so sure. The ChiNat leader wanted some assurances about Quemoy and Matsu from the President before he would agree to abandon the Tachens. Eisenhower was unwilling to give any such guarantee. On January 31, he called Radford to his office, to give Radford his orders. The President said that he would defend Quemoy and Matsu “if an attack [on them] were to occur which the U.S. judged to constitute a threat to Formosa,” but he did not want Chiang or anyone else informed of that position, as he insisted on reserving the final decision to himself.12 The President also told Radford that if Chiang asked for help in evacuating the Tachens, the Seventh Fleet should provide assistance. Eisenhower would not, however, authorize any attacks against the Chinese mainland. If the ChiComs “undertook a consistent and persistent air attack against the [evacuation] operation,” the Seventh Fleet could attack ChiCom airfields on the mainland, but only after clearing it with the President.13 The evacuation began on February 4 and was completed within a week; the ChiComs did not attack.
That left Quemoy and Matsu. Eisenhower’s ambiguous resolution led the whole world to wonder if he would fight to defend them or not. Aside from Chiang and Eisenhower, it seemed that almost no one else was ready to do so. The Europeans were especially alarmed. Churchill best expressed their fears. He told Eisenhower that while of course the United States could not allow the ChiComs to overrun Formosa, he could not see the point of holding on to Quemoy and Matsu. Churchill said that in the event of a ChiCom invasion, the Seventh Fleet could easily “drown any Chinese would-be invaders of Formosa.”14
To reassure the Europeans, Eisenhower used his favorite emissary, the SACEUR, General Gruenther. In a long letter to Gruenther (with an almost identical letter to Churchill), Eisenhower explained his position. He said he realized that Europeans “consider America reckless, impulsive and immature,” but pointed out that at home he had to deal with “the truculent and the timid, the jingoists and the pacifists.” The pressures, in other words, were coming on him from all sides, ranging from advice to immediately launch a full-scale atomic strike against the ChiComs through the spectrum to advice to withdraw from Formosa itself. If he were to announce an intention to defend Quemoy and Matsu, it would mean that the United States would have to assure the defense of islands “that are almost within wading distance of the mainland.” That would be costly and “we could get badly tied down.”
Why not just pull out? Because, the President explained, the morale of the ChiNats was at stake. Already there were disturbing rumors that ChiNat forces were breaking under Chou’s pressure, and the CIA reported the possibility that whole units of Chiang’s army were ready to jump to the Communist side. So while Eisenhower was more than ready to agree that Quemoy and Matsu had no relation to the defense of Formosa as such, he argued that they were central to the problem of ChiNat morale. Eisenhower told Gruenther what he had repeatedly told the JCS, that ChiNat morale was the key to everything, because if Chiang’s army would not fight to defend Formosa, nothing could be done. And ChiNat morale depended on holding on to Quemoy and Matsu. Why? Because the ChiNats considered the islands as “stepping-stones” to their eventual invasion of the mainland. Abandoning the islands would be, to the ChiNats, equivalent to abandoning all hopes of ever retaking China itself. With that hope gone, Chiang’s units might desert wholesale.
The Europeans were worried about what Russia might do if United States armed forces were involved in a war in the China Sea. Eisenhower assured Gruenther that “I do not believe that Russia wants war at this time,” that the U.S.S.R. would not involve itself in a fight for Formosa nor would it use the opportunity to march across the Elbe River. The Russians would, Eisenhower said, provide the ChiComs with supplies, “but I am convinced that Russia does not want, at this moment, to experiment with means of defense against the bombing that we could conduct against her mainland.”15
In his letter to Churchill, Eisenhower emphasized the importance of the ChiNat Army. He reminded the Prime Minister that “only a few months back we had both Chiang and a strong, well-equipped French Army to support the free world’s position in Southeast Asia. The French are gone—making it clearer than ever that we cannot afford the loss of Chiang unless all of us are to get completely out of that corner of the globe. This is unthinkable to us—I feel it must be to you.”16
Dominoes again—Eisenhower was saying that the loss of Quemoy and Matsu would lead to the loss of the entire Western position in Asia. Churchill was not convinced. He said that all the ChiComs wanted was Quemoy and Matsu (and implied that he agreed with them that the islands rightly belonged to China). Eisenhower replied that simply was not so, and invited Churchill to examine Chou’s statements, which consistently said that his real goal was Formosa. Churchill dismissed Chou’s statements as “just talk.” Eisenhower strongly disagreed, telling Churchill that after the ChiComs took Formosa, they would go after Japan.17 Eisenhower also insisted that it was important to keep the ChiNats on China’s flank, always threatening to invade, because that tied down ChiCom forces that might otherwise be used in South Korea or against South Vietnam. On February 16, Eisenhower told the Republican leaders that because of what was at stake, he would have to “sort of hold Chiang Kai-shek’s hand throughout this difficult time.” Then, Hagerty wrote in his diary, “the President smiled wrily and said almost to himself, ‘But those damned little offshore islands. Sometimes I wish they’d sink.’ ”18
But they would not, and to get British agreement to their defense, Eisenhower sent Dulles to London to talk to Churchill. He told Dulles to ask Churchill what position the British would want America to take if Chou suddenly announced his intention to capture Hong Kong, and began building the airfields to make it possible.19 He also sent along yet another letter to Churchill, in which he brought up a theme he had first used in December 1941, when George Marshall had asked him what strategy to pursue in the Pacific in the face of the overwhelming Japanese attack. At that time, Eisenhower had replied that the United States had to do all it could to defend the Philippines, because the people of Asia “will be watching us. They may excuse failure but they will not excuse abandonment.”20 In 1955, Eisenhower thought the same principle applied. “All the non-Communist nations of the Western Pacific,” he told Churchill, “are watching nervously to see what we do next. I fear that if we . . . should attempt to compel Chiang to make further retreats, the conclusions of these Asian peoples will be that they had better plan to make the best terms they can with the Communists . . .”21
Churchill, and his Foreign Secretary and heir apparent, Eden, remained unconvinced. They wanted negotiations, a cease-fire, a cooling off, anything. Eden suggested that the ChiNats withdraw from Quemoy and Matsu in return for a ChiCom promise to abstain from attacking Formosa. Eisenhower labeled the suggestion “more wishful than realistic.”22
After Dulles left London, he flew to Asia, making several stops to assess the situation. He returned to the States in time for a March 10 NSC meeting, where he reported that “the situation out there in the Formosa Straits is far more serious than I thought.” He believed the ChiComs were serious about taking Formosa, and he doubted that Chiang’s troops would remain loyal in the event of a ChiCom lodgment on Formosa. He said there was a “need better to inform the American people of the hostilities (probably not leading to general war) in defending Formosa.”
Then Dulles turned to the point that made defending Quemoy and Matsu such a risky, indeed scary, proposition. “If we defend Quemoy and Matsu,” he said bluntly, “we’ll have to use atomic weapons. They alone will be effective against the mainland airfields.” Because of the New Look, the United States did not have the strength to defend the islands by conventional arms. Dulles acknowledged that using atomic bombs against China would have “a repercussive effect” on Europeans and the Japanese, so “world public opinion must be prepared.”23 Dulles, at least, was ready to face the worst. He concluded, “Before this problem is solved, I believe there is at least an even chance that the United States will have to go to war.” Eisenhower did not disagree; he did say that if war broke out, it “would not be of our seeking.”24
Nevertheless, the President did not want to use atomic weapons. Among other considerations, he was worried about the European reaction. Although France had ratified the agreements bringing sovereignty to West Germany and allowing German rearmament, other continental nations had not yet ratified, and if the United States started using atomic bombs against China they probably would not. In this “especially delicate situation,” Eisenhower told the NSC the following day, March 11, he wanted to know “what is the minimum we could do to protect our ally, Free China, and yet not exacerbate the situation in Europe?” He did not want to talk about atomic bombs, and he refused to even consider sending American ground troops to Formosa, but he did want to do something. Surely, he thought, Quemoy and Matsu could be defended without initiating an atomic strike. Could not napalm be used?25
What the President needed was more precise information on the situation on 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.26 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.”27
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.28 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.29 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, “I have one great belief; 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.”30
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.”31 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.32
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.”33
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.34 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.”35
Two days later, on March 25, Admiral Carney briefed correspondents at a private dinner. He said the President was considering acting militarily on an all-out basis “to destroy Red China’s military potential and thus end its expansionist tendencies.” He also said that he expected the war to break out on April 15. Eisenhower called Dulles to express his concern and anger. As Ann Whitman took down the conversation, “President said he’s going to tell Wilson this is intolerable and that if he does not do something about it, President himself will take charge of Defense Department. Meanwhile, he will ask Hagerty to tell press people not to be led astray by such news as Carney gave out, to believe that Administration is being vigilant, and certainly trying to get by without a war.”36 When he talked to Hagerty, Eisenhower complained that Carney and the Navy “are anxious to throw a blockade around the China mainland.” Becoming agitated, the President began to pace. Hagerty recorded, “As he walked, he talked rapidly and forcefully and said: ‘By God, this has got to stop. These fellows like Carney and Ridgway don’t yet realize that they . . . have a boss. I’m going to see Radford in half an hour, and I’m going to tell him to tell Carney to stop talking.’ ”
Then Eisenhower turned to the substance of what Carney had said. He predicted that Carney was “going to look awful silly when April 15th comes along and there is no incident, because honestly our information is that there is no buildup off those islands as yet to sustain any attack, and believe me, they’re not going to take those islands just by wishing for them.” Quemoy and Matsu were “well equipped and well defended,” and they could only be taken by a prolonged campaign. Eisenhower told Hagerty to tell the press corps “that you are not normally a betting man, but if any of them wanted to bet a thousand dollars that we would be in war on . . . the date they wrote about, you would be happy to bet them.”37
Eisenhower was not entirely sure he could get through the crisis without a war. On March 26, he wrote in his diary that Carney just might be right, “because the Red Chinese appear to be completely reckless, arrogant, possibly overconfident, and completely indifferent as to human losses.” Still, he doubted that hostilities would escalate beyond the shelling of the islands. “I have so often been through these periods of strain that I have become accustomed to the fact that most of the calamities that we anticipate really never occur.”38
On March 30, Dulles and Eisenhower met with the leaders of both parties. Dulles gave a long presentation. When he finished, Rayburn said that as he understood the situation, if the ChiComs should attack Quemoy and Matsu, the United States would intervene. Eisenhower quickly corrected him. The President said he had not made that decision and would not make it until he knew the precise circumstances of any attack. If it appeared that the ChiNats could hold out by themselves, fine. If it appeared that the ChiComs were interested only in Quemoy and Matsu, and did not intend to invade Formosa itself, Eisenhower said the United States would stay out of it. But if an attack on Quemoy and Matsu appeared to be but a preliminary to an attack on Formosa, the United States would intervene. “The tricky business,” Eisenhower admitted in a grand understatement, “is to determine whether or not an attack on Quemoy and Matsu, if made, is truly a local operation or a preliminary to a major effort against Formosa.”39
To the press and public, the critical period in the crisis was the first two weeks in April. The Asian and African nations were scheduled to hold a conference at Bandung, in Indonesia, from April 17 to 24. It was generally assumed that the ChiComs would want to enhance their prestige by taking the offshore islands before the conference began—thus Carney’s date of April 15. But Eisenhower and Dulles took an opposite view. First, Goodpaster had reported that the true critical period was the last two weeks in March; by April 1, Goodpaster felt, Chiang’s defenses on the islands would be sufficient. Second, Dulles felt that the ChiComs would take a different approach to the Bandung conference. They would not seek a military victory, but rather would try to “clean up” their reputation so as to appear to be a peace-loving nation.40
Based on his feeling that the danger point had been passed, Eisenhower began his campaign to find a long-range solution. On April 1, he called Dulles, Wilson, Humphrey, Radford, and Goodpaster to the Oval Office. (It is notable that Eisenhower, for all his staff training and consciousness, and for all his insistence on turning the NSC into a policy-making body, held his most critical conferences during the crisis on an informal basis in the Oval Office.) Radford spoke first. The admiral wanted to put some ten thousand U.S. personnel, primarily Air Force, on Formosa. Eisenhower said “he was thinking rather in terms of small sections of technicians and advisers to be attached to ChiNat units.” The President then outlined his position. A war with China over Quemoy and Matsu was “undesirable” because none of America’s allies would support the United States in such a war, public opinion within the United States would be badly divided, and the effect on the domestic economy would be disastrous.
Eisenhower said a “desirable solution” would be to convince Chiang to voluntarily evacuate Quemoy and Matsu, then entrench himself on Formosa. To induce the ChiNats to retreat, Eisenhower was willing to offer Chiang a division of United States Marines for Formosa and additional Air Force units. If Chiang would not withdraw, Eisenhower’s backup position was to convince him to reduce the size of his commitment to Quemoy and Matsu. The ChiNats had fifty-eight thousand troops on Quemoy and fifteen thousand on Matsu. “That’s just too many troops for those small islands,” the President said, and he did not want the garrisons to become another Dien Bien Phu. He wanted Chiang to turn the islands into outposts instead of fortresses.41
Dulles was not fully convinced; he was concerned about the psychological effect of a retreat. On April 5, in a ten-page, single-spaced memorandum, Eisenhower explained to his Secretary why the United States had to avoid committing itself to the defense of Quemoy and Matsu. Because the ChiComs had overwhelming land forces that they could bring to bear against the islands, “any successful defense would necessarily require counteraction against the mainland of China itself.” The President continued, “We have ample forewarning of the adverse character of world reaction that would follow any such action on our part, especially if we felt compelled to use atomic weapons—which we probably would in order to insure success. . . . Public opinion in the United States would, to say the least, become further divided. If conflict in that region should spread to global proportions, we would be entering a life-and-death struggle under very great handicaps . . . We would be isolated in world opinion.”42
Preserving and strengthening peace, the President decided, required some backing down from the belligerent rhetoric and from the Dien Bien Phu atmosphere surrounding Quemoy and Matsu. On April 20, therefore, he sent Radford and Walter Robertson (who had earlier been his envoy to Syngman Rhee at the time of the POW crisis in South Korea) to Formosa to talk to Chiang. His instructions to Radford and Robertson were delicate in the extreme—too delicate, as it turned out. He wanted them to “lead the Generalissimo into making a proposition that will neither commit the United States to war in defense of the offshore islands nor will constitute an implied repudiation of the Generalissimo by this government.” The envoys, in other words, should induce Chiang himself to suggest a reduction of the garrisons on the islands; if he did that, the U.S. would send the Marine division and supporting air units to Formosa. But Chiang should not be allowed to think that the United States was committed to the defense of Quemoy and Matsu.43
Radford and Robertson sent back long cables on their talks with Chiang. Eisenhower was disappointed with the results. They reported that Chiang did not want Marines on Formosa; what he wanted was an American commitment to defend Quemoy and Matsu. At one point, Chiang walked out of a meeting. The ChiNat Foreign Minister, Yeh, explained to Radford that “Gimo [Chiang] had not anticipated any proposal from us which would involve abandoning Quemoy and Matsu to Communists inasmuch as Gimo was so firmly convinced that he had been given positive assurance by President Eisenhower that U.S. would participate in their defense.”44
Eisenhower was dismayed. He had not wanted to suggest complete abandonment of the islands, only the reduction of their garrisons, and he had wanted his envoys to lead Chiang around to himself proposing such action. But they had failed to understand his point, much less get Chiang to understand it. Eisenhower admitted to Dulles that “it is, of course, possible that no presentation could have brought Chiang to recognizing the wisdom of some arrangement as this . . . but it is clear that as long as Radford and Robertson themselves could not grasp the concept, we simply were not going to get anywhere, and there is nothing in the cable to suggest that such a thought was discussed.” So, he concluded sadly, “We are still on the horns of the dilemma.”45
But in fact, the crisis was already 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. At the end of May, the ChiComs released four American fliers they had held as prisoners; that summer, they released all the prisoners they held. On August 1, talks between American and Chinese representatives began.46
• •
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).”47 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 ambiquities 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.”48 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.
• •
Eisenhower wanted options within his options. If he had to go to atomic war, he wanted choices as to the weapons he used. At the beginning of the worst weeks of the crisis, on February 13, he gave his approval to Operation Teacup, a series of atomic blasts in Nevada. As a part of the process of putting pressure on the ChiComs, Eisenhower had Strauss make a public announcement about the tests. They were small weapons, Strauss explained, under fifty kilotons, designed for battlefield use. (Small is relative—the Hiroshima blast was twenty kilotons.) Eisenhower called Strauss on the day of the first test; Strauss reported it was “very successful.” He also said that Goodpaster had told him the President was thinking of “taking a look” at one of the shots (twelve were scheduled), which Strauss said would be helpful to morale.49 The President was indeed interested; ten days later he told Hagerty that he had never seen one of the things go off and he wanted to do it. Hagerty worried about the public-relations repercussions; it was early March, the Formosa Straits crisis was at its peak and it would appear much too belligerent for the President to be observing an atomic blast. Eisenhower agreed.50
He did so reluctantly, because one aim of Teacup was to “prepare the people,” as Dulles put it, for nuclear war. But the tests were already stirring too much controversy, because by early March radioactive rain was registering at high levels across a thousand-mile belt from Nebraska to New Jersey. The AEC conducted an intensive public-relations campaign to convince the public that fear of fallout was groundless, but nevertheless people were concerned, and Eisenhower did not want to add to their fears by drawing even more attention to Teacup. But neither did he want to give the ChiComs the idea that he was backing away from the possible use of nuclear weapons, so on March 7 he told Dulles to put into his next speech a line saying “we regard it as tragic that we must continue to enlarge our arsenal of atomic weapons . . .” Such a sentence, Eisenhower explained, “would remind individuals that we are really regarding these weapons as ‘conventional’ but at the same time maintain a peaceful and conciliatory tone.”51
An important development in American nuclear policy came that spring as the Eisenhower Administration quietly dropped as its goal the elimination of nuclear weapons from the earth, and instead committed itself to the more modest aim of arms control. Stassen made this official in his first report to the President as the President’s Special Assistant on Disarmament, a position Eisenhower had appointed him to on March 19. Stassen’s report reflected Eisenhower’s feelings. On February 24, talking about disarmament and the stalled talks in London, Eisenhower remarked to Hagerty that “of course the Reds were proposing to eliminate all atomic weapons, which would have the result of going back to ground forces alone, which would leave them with the preponderance of military power in Europe.”52 As Stassen put it in his first report, the United States would seek arms control only under stringent conditions requiring on-site inspection, and would put the highest priority on guarding against a surprise nuclear attack.53
It was with some consternation, therefore, that Eisenhower received the news that the Soviet delegation at the London talks, on May 10, announced substantial acceptance of American proposals for nuclear and general disarmament, including on-site inspection. The President had to do a turnaround. After a decade in which it had always been the Russians who rejected on-site inspection, they had managed to force the United States to do the rejecting. When Eisenhower explained the new American position to a press conference, his words sounded strange coming from a man who had complained about the secrecy of the Iron Curtain so many times. “Are we ready to open up every one of our factories, every place where something might be going on that could be inimical to the interests of somebody else?” Eisenhower asked. “This question of inspection, what we will accept and what, therefore, we would expect others to accept, is a very serious one; consequently, there is just nothing today that I could say that is positive beyond this point.”54
• •
There was no easy way out of the nuclear dilemma. Eisenhower deplored the existence of the bombs, insisted repeatedly that the United States could never win a war using them, not even with a huge lead and a first strike, and yet felt he had to maintain a lead in atomic weapons, else his New Look rationale would fall apart. The “only area” in which the United States was ahead of the Russians, he said (ignoring the Navy), was in nuclear warfare. Yet America could not use the lead. Did this mean that the arms race would go on indefinitely? Eisenhower told a news conference that he was prepared to do just that, saying that America had to have a defense program that it could support and still maintain a healthy economy, “for fifty years, if necessary. I hope and pray that we are not going to carry it fifty years, but that is the way we must design it.”55
Was there then no hope? Was mankind doomed forever to a nuclear arms race? The only way that Eisenhower could see to avoid that outcome was to lower tensions by improving relations with the Soviets. After the fright the world had just gone through over Quemoy and Matsu, some kind of peaceful coexistence was a situation everyone wanted. Voices were raised around the world for a summit meeting to settle outstanding issues. Dulles was extremely leery of any summit meeting, because he feared Old Guard criticism for sitting down with the Communists, and he also feared that the Soviets would use the occasion to make propaganda (which was, of course, true; it was equally true that Dulles and the Americans used international conferences for the same purpose).
Eisenhower, too, had objections to going to the summit, although his reasons were different from those of Dulles. Eisenhower believed that the major outstanding problems—two Germanys, two Koreas, two Vietnams, two Chinas, and arms control—were intractable. Therefore nothing positive could come from a meeting at the summit. Peoples’ hopes would have been raised only to be dashed.
But despite his objections, Eisenhower was willing to try to reach out to the Soviets. In late 1954, he had made a significant reduction in his demands on the Russians for “proof” of their sincere intentions. Earlier, he had said there could be no talks until the Russians had done a series of things to prove their good faith; but on November 23, 1954, the President said that suitable evidence of Russian good faith could be provided by one simple act. Indeed, it was an act so simple, and so relatively painless for the Russians, that if the Russians were as eager for a summit meeting as they said they were, they could not resist Eisenhower’s proposal. Eisenhower said, “A very definite agreement as to the Austrian treaty would be taken as a deed that would indicate real sincerity on the part of the Communist world to go into further negotiations.”56
There was no further move, by either side, toward a summit until the Formosa Straits crisis cooled. Then the pressure built again. On April 5, Churchill finally retired and Anthony Eden took his place. Eden called for general elections in May, and he told Eisenhower he wanted to campaign on the basis of having arranged a summit meeting to ease world tension. Churchill also called for a summit, as did Senator Walter George, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Premier Edgar Faure of France.
More important, there was a change of leadership in Russia. Nikolai Georgi 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. What the meaning of these changes was for the United States was unclear, but it appeared that the Red Army would have more influence on the government. Hagerty asked Eisenhower if this meant that “Russia was moving toward war.” Eisenhower said he doubted it, and explained: “If you’re in the military and you know about these terrible destructive weapons, it tends to make you more pacifistic . . .” Besides, he added, “They’re not ready for war and they know it. They also know if they go to war, they’re going to end up losing everything they have. That also tends to make people conservative.”57
In May, the new Soviet leadership reached out to accept Eisenhower’s offer, when it announced that it was ready to sign the Austrian peace treaty. The details of that treaty had long since been worked out—Austria would regain her independence as the occupying powers left the country; Austria would be neutral, on the Swiss model, with its own defense forces—but the Russians had put off signing the treaty. The announcement that they would now do so, coupled with Eisenhower’s declaration that such an act would provide the proof he required of Soviet willingness to negotiate seriously, made a summit meeting both possible and inevitable.
On May 15, the Foreign Ministers of the four occupying powers signed the Austrian treaty. On June 13, they announced the completion of arrangements for a summit meeting. It would be held in Geneva, beginning on July 18, 1955.
On June 22, the Russians shot down an American Navy patrol plane over the Bering Strait. The Soviet government, in an unprecedented act, issued a statement of regret and paid half the damages. Eisenhower did his part to keep the situation calm. At a press conference, he said that the incident was probably due to a trigger-happy Soviet pilot, that weather conditions at the time were not good, and that it must have been a “misunderstanding.” In fact, the Navy plane was on a reconnaissance mission over Soviet airspace. To make sure it did not happen again, on June 25 Eisenhower called Radford on the phone and told the admiral “to issue an order that all planes and vessels should stay well outside the fifteen-mile limit during the period between now and the Summit Conference.” The meeting at Geneva remained on track.58
• •
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 felt 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.59 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 AFLCIO, told his associates: “American labor has never had it so good.”60 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! She never saw so many furs and diamonds.”61
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.62 Ever since his 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.
Finally, Eisenhower wanted the highways as a part of his overall Cold War program. Throughout the Formosa Straits crisis, he had worried about how to evacuate Washington in the event of a nuclear attack on the capital, and on other cities too. Four-lane highways leading out of the cities would make evacuation possible; they would also facilitate the movement of military traffic in the event of war.
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 to 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.63 In September 1954, Eisenhower put Lucius Clay at the head of a blue-ribbon private citizens’ committee to study methods of financing.
In January 1955, Clay submitted his report. He called for a ten-year building program financed by federal gasoline taxes. Eisenhower talked with Clay, expressing his “tremendous enthusiasm” for the project, but asking why Clay had not recommended tolls rather than taxes to finance the system. Eisenhower said he personally favored tolls. Clay said tolls would work in the heavily populated sections of the East and West Coasts, but not in the heart of the country. Eisenhower accepted the explanation.64 He then gave a series of pep talks to the legislative leaders in Congress, emphasizing in strong words his total commitment to new highways.65 On February 22, Eisenhower sent to Congress the Clay report, along with his own message urging “comprehensive and quick and forward-looking action.” Financing the multibillion-dollar project would be done through bond issues, backed by a federal gasoline and tire tax specially dedicated to retiring the bonds through an Interstate Highway Trust Fund.66 The Administration bill passed the Senate, but it died in the House, where Democrats objected to the bond issue and wanted to instead increase taxes on the trucking industry.67
Eisenhower also failed to get through Congress his school-construction bill. He had asked for an investment of a billion dollars in federal loans and grants to the states for the construction of school-houses, badly needed as a result of the postwar baby boom. The Old Guard was alarmed at the possible intrusion of the federal government into education; the Democrats wanted a much more expansive program that would include not only school construction but also federal assistance for teachers’ salaries and other education expenses. Further complicating the proposed bill was the problem of desegregation; liberal Democrats wanted to deny funds to any state that continued to segregate its schools, something southern Democrats would never accept.
Eisenhower nevertheless wanted to push ahead. He agreed heartily with Nixon, at a Cabinet meeting, when Nixon remarked that “Earl Warren got the reputation of being a great liberal because he built schools and roads” and insisted that nothing could be so popular as schools and roads. Eisenhower said the two tied together nicely, because “you have to have roads to get to schools.”68 But before Eisenhower could get either program going, he had to have a majority in Congress behind him, and in 1955 he failed to get it.
Indeed, the combination of a Democratic Congress and a Republican Administration meant that precious little in the way of domestic legislation could be passed. Both parties were jockeying for position for the 1956 presidential election; neither party was willing to give the other credit for major legislation. The Democrats were unwilling to get behind Eisenhower’s health reinsurance program, because they wanted a much broader approach to health care; meanwhile the Old Guard remained opposed to any program at all, and nothing happened. Eisenhower did manage, finally, to get a three-year extension on RTAA (and in addition the authority to cut some tariff schedules by 5 percent a year),69 although it pained him that he got more Democratic than Republican support on the bill.
Eisenhower thought the most blatant attempt to play politics with legislation was Sam Rayburn’s proposal to give every taxpayer a $20 cut for each dependent. Eisenhower, who by 1955 was within $2 billion of balancing the budget, was appalled. He told his closest Democratic friend, George Allen, that it was an “astounding proposal,” one of “fiscal frivolity,” and he wanted Allen to let Rayburn know that if he pushed the proposal, he could not expect any cooperation from the Administration on legislation that Texas wanted, such as a natural-gas bill. Eisenhower also asked the Republican leaders to “pass the word” to Rayburn and “stop this nonsense.” To Allen, Eisenhower remarked that “these are the things that make one grow old and look with longing eyes to life on a farm.”70 Nevertheless the bill passed the House, but in the Senate the southern Democrats joined with the Republicans to defeat it.
In 1955, it was the Democrats who controlled the committees, and who thus were in charge of investigations. They were, naturally, looking for scandals in the Eisenhower Administration, and they felt they had found one down in Tennessee. Hearings examining the Dixon-Yates contract with TVA had revealed that Adolphe H. Wenzell, a vice-president of the First Boston Corporation, had been a consultant to the Bureau of the Budget on the technical arrangements of the contract while he was simultaneously consulting with Messrs. Dixon and Yates on behalf of First Boston. Senator Estes Kefauver charged that the Administration was trying to conceal Wenzell’s obvious conflict of interest. Eisenhower initially tried to deny that Wenzell had had anything to do with Dixon-Yates and TVA,71 which was a violation of a principle he had recommended to Nixon, a lesson “I learned a long time ago.” It was, “Don’t try to be cute or cover up. If you do, you will get so entangled you won’t know what you’re doing.”72 Eisenhower was headed for real difficulties on Dixon-Yates, but his luck held. Memphis announced it would build its own steam power plant, which solved the problem of generating more power within the region without expanding TVA, and thus made Dixon-Yates irrelevant. For Memphis to build its own steam plant had always been Eisenhower’s solution, and he eagerly grabbed at it. On July 11, Eisenhower announced that the government was canceling its contract with Dixon-Yates (those gentlemen then sued the government for $1,867,545 to recover money already spent; the Court of Claims awarded the money, but six years later the Supreme Court overruled on the grounds that Wenzell’s dual status made the negotiations technically illegal).73
Dixon-Yates was a minor irritation in that bright, booming beginning of summer of 1955. So were the failures to get domestic legislation through Congress. What mattered was peace and prosperity. Eisenhower had gotten out of Korea, avoided war in Indochina and the Formosa Straits, reduced defense spending, almost balanced the budget, brought inflation down to 1 percent, managed to avoid an Old Guard dismantling of the New Deal reforms, and enjoyed deep and widespread popularity among the public. Everyone outside the ranks of the professional Democrats, it seemed, wanted him to run again. Even Nehru, so often critical of the United States, declared that “Eisenhower is the greatest force for peace in the world today” and expressed the hope that he would stay in the White House until January 1961.74
Would he or would he not run again? Eisenhower told conflicting stories to his advisers, and gave only the vaguest kind of hints to the press and public. In late May, when Gabe Hauge came in to tell Eisenhower that he had an offer to become dean of the Business School at Harvard and wanted to accept, Eisenhower told him exactly the opposite of what he had recently told Hagerty; the President said that “frankly . . . he did not intend to seek the nomination again.” He explained that he had not sought to complete a program as President, only to point the way toward “a reversal of the trend of the last twenty years” and to strengthen the Republican Party. He felt he had accomplished both tasks and could be permitted to retire. Therefore he asked Hauge to stay on the team until January 1957, when a younger man could take over the Oval Office. “It isn’t that I don’t like the job,” Eisenhower told Hauge. He enjoyed the “challenge of working with people,” and appreciated the “great minds” he had around to help him. He also said, “In many ways I think I am pretty well qualified for this thing,” although he admitted that the politicians sometimes gave him fits. “I so despise their methods that there is just a resentment in me that finally renders me relatively ineffective.” Therefore, “It isn’t just that I want to quit, I believe I should quit.”
Hauge asked who could possibly succeed him. Eisenhower said that Bob Anderson “would be the finest candidate we could have.” Herbert Hoover, Jr., would be a good President, but he “just hasn’t quite got the fire” to get elected. Charlie Halleck would be all right, primarily because “he just loves politics.” Next came Nixon, who “has made some enemies and is not considered very matured—but he’s got a pretty good experience.” Henry Cabot Lodge would be excellent, except that he was “a blueblood from Boston, and you could not elect him.” Herb Brownell and George Humphrey were other possibilities. Of all the Republicans, Eisenhower concluded, indeed of all the prominent men in the country, the one who would make the best President was Earl Warren, but Eisenhower knew that Warren did not want to leave the Supreme Court.75
The 1956 election was a problem for the future. By telling one man one thing, another man another, Eisenhower was keeping his options open. For the present, at the beginning of the summer of 1955, Eisenhower’s concern was with the upcoming Geneva Conference. Although he consistently warned the American people not to get their hopes up too high, so many possibilities suddenly seemed open as a consequence of the resolution of the Formosa Straits crisis that Eisenhower himself was letting his own hopes soar. On June 20, he went to San Francisco to address the Tenth Anniversary Meeting of the United Nations. In his speech, he said that “the summer of 1955, like that one of 1945, is another season of high hope for the world. There again stirs in the hearts of men a renewed devotion to the work for the elimination of war.”76 To that end he was himself devoted, and he prepared to go to Geneva determined to explore and extend the possibilities of genuine peace.