3

Projecting Military Strength

Following the same intellectual path by which he sought to restore America’s economic strength, Eisenhower committed early and consistently to the buildup of national military strength through the construction and deployment of atomic and thermonuclear weapons. He believed the United States was fortunate to be able to build a vast nuclear arsenal and he aimed to employ those weapons in every possible manner as a force for good against a ruthless enemy. The president recognized the danger of a massive nuclear buildup and was troubled by the idea of general thermonuclear war. His sincere concern about the fate of the republic and its people in the event of nuclear exchange ultimately did not dissuade him from committing to the nuclear weapon as the primary pillar of national military strength or from brandishing those weapons in crises. Indeed, through the proper management of the nuclear arsenal, nuclear weapons provided tremendous military benefit to the republic, Eisenhower concluded.

Eisenhower believed that the struggle with the Soviet Union mandated that the United States display enough military strength so as not to tempt the communists with weakness. Soviet imperialism in Eastern Europe at the end of World War II and continued communist subversion throughout the world represented a serious threat to U.S. national security. Because Eisenhower believed that waging the Cold War required a responsible buildup of national strength, his faith in the nuclear weapon to serve that purpose was both realistic and practical. He wanted peace in the long term, but he believed the Soviet Union would never negotiate in good faith unless the United States possessed sufficient national strength and demonstrated the willingness to employ that strength as needed. Sufficient military strength would enable the nation to deter enemy aggression if possible and to win a war if necessary. To project this military strength, Eisenhower emphasized the strategic benefits of nuclear weapons. To him, they were available, reliable, and effective and he understood and cared only that nuclear weapons worked well for this purpose. Moreover, Eisenhower committed to build military strength through nuclear weapons and he cared little about which weapons provided the nation that strength. Though he understood the distinction between fission and fusion, between atomic bombs such as those used on Japan in 1945 and thermonuclear weapons, the president’s decision to utilize them both for military strength meant that, at least from Eisenhower’s perspective, all nuclear weapons were the same. Despite that Eisenhower often indicated trepidation about nuclear war, he refused to describe nuclear weapons as unusable and instead sought every military advantage the nuclear weapon provided. For this reason, he chose first tactical atomic war and later thermonuclear deterrence as the centerpieces of American grand strategy.

a. Simply Another Weapon

In the first military crisis of his administration Eisenhower resolved to end the stalemated Korean War on terms agreeable to the war-weary citizens of the United States. He pursued diplomacy and negotiations, but those had stalled and he had few military alternatives beyond what Truman had already tried. Eisenhower’s trump card was the atomic weapon which both the U.S. and the Soviets possessed, but which the Chinese and the North Koreans did not. Truman had ultimately chosen not to use the atomic bomb in Korea, and Eisenhower believed the president had missed an opportunity.

As early as 30 June 1950, while still at Columbia, Eisenhower thought the United States should respond more decisively to acts of communist aggression. “In a fight,” Eisenhower believed, “we (our side) can never be too strong. We must study every angle to be prepared for whatever may happen – even if it finally comes to use of A-bomb (which God forbid.)”¹ After becoming president, Eisenhower, as promised, travelled to South Korea where he saw a stalemated war. Although United States and United Nations forces had recaptured Seoul in May 1951 they had been unable to push North Korean and Chinese forces much further north. “There were no major military movements,” Eisenhower later remembered, “but for many months more the war was to grind out painful lists of casualties without significant changes in situation or disposition.”²

Eisenhower refused to accept the stalemate, but saw only a few options. To stay the course was unacceptable and to seek “an all-out military victory by conventional means” was “the least attractive of all plans.” He considered various alternatives to get the communists “to accede to an armistice in a reasonable time” and concluded that his best strategy was a show of strength and possibly a major offensive to achieve the desired ends. This offensive involved an expansion of the war beyond Korea into China, including air strikes against Chinese airfields and a blockade of the Chinese coast, a significant buildup of American and South Korean forces, and “finally, to keep the attack from becoming overly costly, it was clear that we would have to use atomic weapons.”³ Eisenhower did not take lightly the use of atomic weapons, nor did he strike a “cavalier pose toward nuclear weapons,” as one historian has suggested.⁴

Rather, Eisenhower first pursued a subtle and gradual escalation of the atomic dialogue. He understood that when talking about the deployment and use of atomic weapons, one must be quite careful.⁵ “He was very restrained, especially publicly, in any talk about weapons or military action,” Andrew Goodpaster remembered.⁶ Sherman Adams also considered Eisenhower a man of deliberation, one who would occasionally hesitate if the situation allowed and if this approach served his interests. Eisenhower believed that the Soviet Union and China properly understood American national strength, but he also thought that a diplomatic and military strategy of projecting that strength was needed to convince those enemies to resolve the stalemated war on the Korean peninsula. Eisenhower decided to use some form of diplomacy which included atomic deterrence if possible and military action through tactical atomic war if needed to bring the war to an end.

Eisenhower’s understanding of tactical atomic war was framed by his study of Carl von Clausewitz, the famed Prussian military theorist whose seminal work, On War, was standard reading for West Point cadets, Command and General Staff College students, and aides of General Fox Conner. As executive officer to General Fox Conner at Camp Gaillard in Panama, Eisenhower had waded through what one observer called “an intellectual proving ground” during which he read On War at least three times.⁷ He later recalled his time in Panama as “a sort of graduate school in military affairs.”⁸ After the Bible, he claimed On War had the greatest effect on his life.⁹ As president, however, Eisenhower could not always apply the lessons from his training in military history because much of them dealt too specifically with tactical battlefield decisions under specific circumstances in past conflicts. Eisenhower relied on his understanding of Clausewitz to clarify the main issues of the Korean War. On Korea, Eisenhower told a reporter in March 1953, “I would refer you to Clausewitz. He knew even 150 years ago that there were various kinds of wars, and some partake of little more than police action, others get to be great conflagrations. So far as I am concerned, it is a war.”¹⁰