a. A Crusading Religion

As president-elect in December 1952, Eisenhower advocated faith as a means to wage the Cold War. “Now, it seems to me that if we are going to win this fight we have got to go back to the very fundamentals of all things,” Eisenhower explained, “and one of them is that we are a religious people.” Even those “silly” people who denied the existence of an Almighty nonetheless lived in a “religious civilization,” he continued, simply because “the Founding Fathers said it was a religious concept that they were trying to translate into the political world.” In the middle of the Cold War, the republic needed strength to defend the nation against the scourge of communism in this great “ideological war.” Strength would demonstrate to other nations that “our leadership is not one of imperialism, but is one of purity. It is one of integrity, with a belief in the dignity of man.”⁷ The calls for moral strength reverberated throughout Eisenhower’s two terms. “I patiently explain over and over again,” Eisenhower wrote to a friend in 1956, “that American strength is a combination of its economic, moral, and military force.”⁸

Eisenhower’s emphasis upon moral strength stemmed in part from his own religious faith. Robert Linder and Richard Pierard have argued that Eisenhower’s childhood religious experiences included Bible readings, moral piety, and steady church attendance.

According to Pierard and Linder, Eisenhower was not baptized as a child because his parents belonged to a Christian sect called the River Brethren which believed in baptism only of believers. His parents later joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but young Dwight apparently did not follow. After that, Linder and Pierard concluded that “the evidence is far too sketchy to render a firm judgment” about his faith. During his time at West Point and through World War II, Eisenhower held a “transdenominational faith” not unlike that “propagated through the military chaplaincy.”⁹ His religious faith was later reinforced by his belief in the goodness of the Allied cause during World War II and he understood the war against Nazi tyranny to be a moral fight, a sentiment so strong he titled his memoir of the war years, Crusade in Europe.¹⁰ He believed that the freedom of individuals “was a value derived from their status as children of God” and that the Nazis sought to destroy that freedom and replace it with quasi-religious adherence to the nation.¹¹ Later, Eisenhower would attribute a similar creed to the communists who abolished religion.

Before 1952, Eisenhower did not subscribe to a specific religious denomination. He attended chapel occasionally while in the army but never joined a church or established ties with a religious community. He considered himself “very earnestly and seriously religious” but never described himself as anything more precise than a Christian. “I have always sort of treasured my independence,” Eisenhower told a friend, “because I like to note the differences in several Protestant denominations.” After the election of 1952, Eisenhower was baptized a Presbyterian and joined the Presbyterian Church. “It is much easier to say ‘I am a Presbyterian’ than to say ‘I am Christian but I do not belong to any denomination,’” Eisenhower explained.¹² Indeed, when Eisenhower spoke of religion before and after his baptism, he made few distinctions among persons of differing faiths. “Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith,” Eisenhower argued just after his first presidential election, “and I don’t care what it is.”¹³

Eisenhower’s professions of faith during his presidency typify what scholars such as Pierard and Linder have called American civil religion.¹⁴ According to Robert Bellah, the American sociologist who coined the term, American civil religion referred to a specific kind of religious faith, unique to the United States, in which the secular values embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are recognized, respected, and celebrated as if they were divine and where secular American experiences are equated with Judeo-Christian ones.¹⁵ Pierard and Linder took the concept further and have considered the role of presidents within the context of American civil religion. They have described President Eisenhower’s civil religion as pastoral in nature. They argued that Eisenhower believed his political and indeed religious role was to lead the American republic and its citizens to national greatness. He yearned to steer the nation through the difficult early years of the Cold War and growing American global responsibility. The Republican National Committee went so far as to call Eisenhower “the spiritual leader of our times.”¹⁶ Immediately before delivering his first inaugural address, Eisenhower read a prayer for those in attendance: “Almighty God, as we stand here at this moment my future associates in the executive branch of government join me in beseeching that Thou will make full and complete our dedication to the service of the people in this throng, and their fellow citizens everywhere.”¹⁷ After the inauguration, Eisenhower the pastor convened his new administration with a prayer and a speech in which he asked for God’s help in guiding the people of the United States.

The Cold War brought a new dimension to Eisenhower’s civil religion, specifically an anti-communist element. The battle against communism, Eisenhower argued, did not result from a difference of political ideology alone but also religion. Whereas the United States was founded upon Christian values of peace, love, and forgiveness, atheism spread by Soviet communism rejected such values and led to moral depravity, violence, pestilence, and dictatorship. Pierard and Linder asserted that Eisenhower’s personal faith “emphasized God as the wellspring of individual and national strength, government as resting on a spiritual foundation, faith as a public virtue, and the utilitarian nature of religion in the apocalyptic struggle against communism.”¹⁸ Eisenhower’s moral campaign against communism was rooted in his belief that humans were born free, and any individual or institution seeking to destroy that freedom did so in defiance of God’s will.¹⁹

During the Cold War, Eisenhower’s faith helped him understand what he saw as the central moral difference between a society such as the United States in which the value of individual life was rooted in a belief in the Almighty and one such as the Soviet Union where life was rooted in atheistic materialism. “Basic to our democratic civilization are the principles and convictions that have bound us together as a nation,” he told graduates of the Naval Academy in June 1958. “Among these are personal liberty, human rights, and the dignity of man,” the president continued, “all these have their roots in a deeply held religious faith–in a belief in God.” More importantly, he argued that “These are the truths with which we must combat the falsity of Communist materialistic doctrine … Free world respect for them and Communist disdain for them are the very core of the struggle between Communist imperialism and Western freedom.”²⁰

Eisenhower believed that the greatest threat to those divine rights was the spread of international communism from its source in the Soviet Union. “Atheism substitutes men for the supreme creator,” he told a television audience in 1954, “and this leads inevitably to domination and dictatorship.” “It is because we believe that God intends all men to be free and equal that we demand free government,” the president continued.²¹ Because the communists were atheists, he believed that they operated without a moral compass, without proper respect for the lives of others, and without concern for the future of their own world. “All our laws are rooted in values very different from the Soviets’,” he concluded, for example, “we speak of ‘good faith’; they believe, as part of their creed, in any form of deceit and treachery which advances the cause of Communist domination.”²² He concluded in 1954 that “the future is shadowed by mushroom clouds and menaced by godless men addicted to force and violence and the continuance of anarchy among nations.”²³

Though he often chided the Soviets for their unthinking atheism, he maintained his conviction about the basic nature of humanity. As Joseph Stalin lay dying in March 1953, Eisenhower helped craft a letter to the Soviet people. “The thoughts of America go out to all the peoples of the U.S.S.R.,” the president wrote. “They are children of the same God who is the Father of all peoples everywhere,” he continued. “Regardless of the identity of government personalities,” Eisenhower concluded, “the prayer of us Americans continues to be that the Almighty will watch over the people of that vast country and bring them, in His wisdom, opportunity to live their lives in a world where all men and women and children dwell in peace and comradeship.”²⁴ Still, the absence of religion among communists in general and Soviet leaders in particular made them an unstable adversary. The president did not believe that he could anticipate Soviet actions or account for Soviet thinking on matters of life and death because the Soviet atheistic world view contrasted so greatly with his own. “We have no basis for thinking that they abhor destruction as we do,” Eisenhower told the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1956.²⁵ As president, he could do very little to change this situation, but he could take the moral high ground in the struggle with the communists.

Eisenhower believed that the nation needed to muster enough moral strength to challenge the communist threat. “And because of the threat imposed by a militant and aggressive atheism,” he explained, “I believe that the strengthening of all phases of our moral and spiritual foundations has a profound significance for the actual security of our nation.”²⁶ The building of moral strength did not involve an iteration of Christian doctrine as part of a missionary impulse to convert the non-Christian world. Rather, Eisenhower believed that national moral strength developed from a combination of secular American political rights such as speech, suffrage, and property and basic Christian values such as peace, love, and forgiveness. This blend manifested in a desire to preserve the natural right of men to be free and in the pursuit of peace for all of God’s creatures. It was confirmed by a universal hope for a bright and better future. Throughout his presidency, when Eisenhower spoke of spirituality, religion, or faith in the context of national strength, he referred to this general mix of secular and religious values and described nothing more specific than basic human morality and social responsibility inspired and sustained by a lasting faith in an Almighty god. Within this context, Eisenhower believed that the United States could use nuclear weapons and nuclear energy to make peace among men and to foster hope for the future of the atomic world.

b. An Indispensable Platform

The increasing tension of the Cold War, the subsequent arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the pursuit of nuclear weapons by Great Britain, France, and China created a stable if uncertain system of nuclear deterrence among the superpowers. Nuclear weapons and their delivery systems improved during the 1950s and by the end of the decade, the United States and the Soviet Union possessed enough firepower to destroy one another completely. As the Cold War intensified, both sides understood that neither side could attack the other and expect to achieve victory without suffering catastrophic damage themselves. The fear that any nuclear attack would prompt a devastating counterattack and certain destruction on both sides discouraged either superpower from initiating the next great war. This system was known as deterrence.

For Eisenhower, deterrence was the byproduct of the great scientific and technological achievements of the period. “We continued to build an overpowering military establishment,” Eisenhower remembered, “as the only feasible defense against the menace and probings of international Communism.”²⁷ Despite the need, Eisenhower still thought that “the building up of large arsenals was just absurd on both sides.”²⁸ The arms race and deterrence which resulted seemed likely to continue on “into the indefinite future” with little prospect for anything other than a paralyzing fear among the peoples of the world.²⁹ “Because each side possesses weapons of incalculable destructive power and with extraordinary efficiency in means of delivery,” Eisenhower understood, “world fears and tensions are intensified.”³⁰

He recognized that the United States suffered from a “hysterical fear” of nuclear war, but he worried that the enemy might not share that sentiment indefinitely.³¹ If the fear dissipated, deterrence would falter, which would lead to a catastrophic nuclear war. It was also possible that the fear itself might encourage the enemy to launch a first strike under the presumption that an effective surprise attack might eliminate or seriously weaken any response. Deterrence depended upon each side responding rationally to danger, and the system allowed no room for error. This balance of fear always seemed precarious, and, as a result, Americans lived in fear of nuclear annihilation.

Deterrence over the long term seemed both necessary and unacceptable to Eisenhower. He hated that deterrence bred fear and uncertainty. At any one point, nuclear deterrence preserved the peace, but over the long term deterrence offered no prospects for lasting peace. As Eisenhower prepared his nation for the long pull economically, militarily, and industrially, he concluded that deterrence was not compatible with his vision for the Cold War. Deterrence then became equally as immoral as fiscal irresponsibility. Still, he accepted deterrence in the short term. He found it difficult to resist this convenient if hazardous answer to the Cold War’s nuclear dilemma, and he saw no immediate desirable alternative. While the problems inherent in deterrence, the increasing tension of the Cold War, and the global consequences of general war weighed heavily on Eisenhower’s mind, he reluctantly concluded that only from the “indispensable platform” provided by deterrence could he pursue disarmament and peace.³²

For Eisenhower, general disarmament, or reduction of nuclear and conventional weapons to a certain low level, was attractive for several reasons. First, a reduction of armaments would spare the superpowers the unbearable cost of building and maintaining massive nuclear stockpiles. The saved resources might then be directed inward on the domestic economy or outward on developing nations where imperialism and its legacy had retarded economic and political development. Second, Eisenhower believed that disarmament would reduce the great fear which dominated international relations. “If nations, large and small, feel compelled to produce costly weapons of war because of alleged or genuine fear of attack,” he reasoned, “these fears would be lessened and cost markedly reduced if trustworthy agreements on levels of military power could be achieved.”³³ He believed arms reduction or general disarmament might achieve the genuine international stability which offered a far better chance at preventing the catastrophic war which the world needed so desperately to avoid. Eisenhower “felt that if arrangements of this kind could be made they would bring stability and lessen the chance of nuclear war occurring,” Andrew Goodpaster remembered.³⁴ The president insisted that the United States “find a way to arrest the development of weapons of massive destruction and to ultimately do away with them.” “This objective seemed paramount in his mind,” John McCone remembered “and he related it to a real fear of an ultimate catastrophe to civilization.”³⁵

As a step in this direction, Eisenhower appointed Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen as his first Special Assistant on Disarmament on 19 March 1955. When asked by the press about his thinking behind the creation of Stassen’s new job, the president replied that “the concept is very simple.” The United States has spent “billions and billions” of dollars to build and maintain “these sterile, unproductive agencies we call defense units and organizations” which served only the negative purpose of security through fear.³⁶ “Fear begets fear,” Eisenhower lectured, and the arms race gathered momentum. The president sought to break the deadlock. So far the varying disarmament proposals from the State Department, the Defense Department, and others in his administration had failed because they were uncoordinated.³⁷ “To the members of the Cabinet, accustomed to long and futile discussions on the subject, disarmament was something as theoretical and abstract as calculus,” Sherman Adams remembered. “But to Eisenhower and Stassen,” Adams continued, “disarmament was a real and urgent necessity of today, the only means of gaining peace and security.”³⁸ The president expected Stassen to work with the State Department, the National Security Council and other involved executive branch institutions to develop a unified policy for disarmament.³⁹

To hold the moral high ground in the disarmament initiative and to make progress toward an agreement, Eisenhower believed that honesty and openness were the keys. This seemed to be the only way to convince the Soviet Union of American good will and to pursue serious disarmament discussions. This was far easier said than done, and his failure to penetrate the depth of Soviet secrecy crippled his disarmament talks from the beginning. By the time of Stassen’s appointment, Eisenhower had already tried several times to reduce the fear of war by opening the dialogue on disarmament. In addition to the “Chance for Peace” speech, Eisenhower had also labored on a speech a month before designed to explain the realities of the nuclear weapon to the public. Under the direction of C. D. Jackson, the drafting process for a candid speech on nuclear weapons began in March 1953.⁴⁰

Special Assistant to the President Bryce Harlow outlined and drafted a speech originally titled “Age of Peril” but which was renamed “The Safety of the Republic.” Harlow wrote of the billions of dollars spent on weapons research, of American nuclear weapons equivalent to 500,000 tons of TNT, and of one American weapon which exceeded the total amount of explosive power unleashed on Germany during World War II. Subsequent drafts circulated through the White House, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Pentagon, and the State Department through the spring of 1953. Those drafts “have since been characterized by a single word ‘BANG!’” reporter John Lear wrote, “because they pictured the frightful wounds a H-bomb could inflict upon the United States.”

Jackson presented early drafts to Eisenhower, who rejected all of them as too frightful.⁴¹ A State Department version dated 16 June 1953 contained the following cryptic passage: “The most important problem for our national defense today is the fact that even now the Soviet Union could drop atomic bombs on this country and that within the next two years, under certain conditions, may be able to deliver a crippling atomic surprise attack against us.”⁴² A draft dated 22 June 1953 replaced the section quoted above (“the most important problem”) with the following: “The fact of transcendent importance for our national security today is that the Soviet atomic stockpile has now reached to point where if delivered on target in the United States – I repeat, if delivered on target – could injure this country gravely, both in material damage and in loss of life.” If they were given the time to resupply and rearm, the Soviets would be capable of delivering another attack which would “hurt us so critically so that our ability to carry on the war thus forced upon us would be substantially impaired.”⁴³ Eisenhower remembered that, upon seeing the final drafts of the Candor speech, “Jackson and I agreed that the exposition left the listener with only a new terror, not a new hope.”⁴⁴ The president wanted a speech which “provided the opportunity to tell America and the world about the size and strength of our atomic capabilities – and yet to do it in such a way as to make the presentation of an argument for peaceful negotiation rather than a story told in an atmosphere of truculence, defiance, and threat.”⁴⁵ He ultimately settled upon the idea of encouraging nuclear nations to contribute fissionable material to the United Nations which would use the material for nuclear power. This later became the Atoms for Peace program.

A related attempt at disarmament was the president’s Open Skies proposal of July 1955. Open Skies was intended to involve a frank and full exchange of military capabilities which would hopefully eliminate the secrecy on both sides which had contributed so greatly “to the fears and dangers of surprise attack.” From there a system of inspections and monitoring could be implemented to guarantee compliance with any future agreements on disarmament. To Eisenhower it was a necessary first step. “The successful working out of such a system,” Eisenhower believed, “would do much to develop the mutual confidence which will open wide the avenues of progress for all our peoples.”⁴⁶ He hoped an agreement might instill “a spirit of non-aggressiveness on both sides and so to create a fresh atmosphere which would dispel much of the present fear and suspicion.”⁴⁷ When Eisenhower spoke about Open Skies in his remarks at the Geneva Conference of 1955, he spoke broadly of faith.

The heads of the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France convened in Geneva, Switzerland in July 1955 to discuss lingering Cold War problems. Eisenhower joined with British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, Premier Edgar Faure of France, and Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin to consider issues such as East-West trade, international security, and the arms race. Eisenhower delivered remarks to the delegates about his new vision for international security through disarmament on 21 July. To safeguard the republic after World War II America needed great strength, he explained. The nation rearmed and built alliances “in a partnership for peace and for mutual security.” Since then, the Cold War had begun and the danger of nuclear war had grown. He believed that the preservation of peace through the building of nuclear arms had devolved from merely ironic to paradoxical, from bizarre to catastrophic. Working toward peace, Eisenhower then concluded, no longer meant only building for war. He announced his pursuit of disarmament to “lighten the burdens upon the backs” and to “ease the fears of war in the anxious hearts of people everywhere.”⁴⁸

The complicating matter in any disarmament negotiation was verification. On one hand, the Soviet leader Bulganin and his successor Nikita Khrushchev insisted on preserving as much as possible the closed nature of Soviet society. They feared any disarmament verification apparatus that included on-site inspections or listening posts. Any agreement, the Soviets argued, needed reliable verification but must not reveal Soviet state secrets or provide a window into the regime for western spies. On the other hand, both Eisenhower and the Congress worried that without proper verification the Soviets would cheat on any deal and augment their own military strength as America foolishly abided by the terms of a treaty. For Eisenhower, the United States bargained in good faith, but the Soviets did not. The president saw the dilemma clearly: “all disarmament proposals stumble over the seemingly insuperable obstacle of Soviet opposition to any kind of inspection. Since they have so often proved faithless to their word, we cannot consider any move that does not provide for adequate inspection and safeguards.”⁴⁹ Accordingly, Eisenhower insisted on rigid monitoring and inspections. He told the National Security Council “that any agreement would have no effect and would not be signed unless an inspection system had been agreed upon, set up, and tested.”⁵⁰ By early 1957, the United Nations General Assembly had referred the matter of disarmament to the U.N. Disarmament Commission where Open Skies and the Soviet counterproposal languished for the rest of Eisenhower’s second term. As the President’s Special Assistant for Disarmament, Stassen continued to work directly with the Disarmament Commission, the Soviets, and the British to take a sound first step toward an agreement.⁵¹ The president understood the difficulty in reaching an agreement with members of his own administration, Congress, and other nations. “There is, however, no alternative to continuation of the effort,” Eisenhower reminded Stassen, “with all the intelligence and patience that we can bring to bear on the matter.”⁵²

Beginning on 18 March 1957, the major powers began a series of meetings in London under the banner of the United Nations Disarmament Commission. Eisenhower earlier succeeded in opening a dialogue with the Soviet Union about a reduction in nuclear armaments, and the Soviet leadership expressed a willingness to discuss the matter further. Within this promising climate, the London talks began. Soviet and American delegates labored over the issue of verification as the central issue of any disarmament deal. The president needed a guarantee of Soviet compliance with any agreement to placate all doubters. The American delegation, which included Eisenhower and Stassen, “worked very hard to find a position in the disarmament area that is as liberal and broad-gauged as elementary considerations of security would permit.”⁵³ In June, the Eisenhower administration settled on a State Department paper that outlined the United States’ position on the first phase of disarmament. Nations willing to agree to that paper would pledge “to cooperate in designing, installing, and maintaining effective inspection systems to verify compliance.” They would further agree that each nation’s compliance with the agreement would be conditioned upon effective operation of those inspection systems. Under this proposal, agreeable parties pledged not to use nuclear weapons unless vitally necessary and “to devote all future production of fissionable materials exclusively to non-weapons purposes.” The deal included trust-building measures such as the creation of initial inspection zones and a temporary nuclear test ban. On disarmament, the United States suggested that three months after the conclusion of an agreement the parties disclose “inventories of fixed military installations and numbers and locations of military forces and major designated armaments (including nuclear weapons delivery capabilities but excluding nuclear weapons)” within the inspection zones. One year after the agreement, the United States and the Soviet Union would transfer “specific quantities of designated types of armaments, substantial in amount, significant in kind” to internationally managed storage sites.⁵⁴ Discussions and negotiations dragged on throughout the London talks.

The president exchanged letters first with the Soviet leader Bulganin and then with his successor Khrushchev pleading with them to change their intransigent attitude toward disarmament negotiations. He reiterated past overtures, including Open Skies, and became increasingly frustrated at Soviet unwillingness to conclude even the most basic agreement to reduce the danger of nuclear war. U.S. disarmament proposals made since 1953 had either been ignored or rejected outright by the Soviet Union, and Eisenhower labored to maintain his optimism. “For several years we have been seeking a dependable ending to the accumulation of nuclear weapons stockpiles and a dependable beginning of the steady reduction of existing weapons stockpiles,” Eisenhower wrote to Khrushchev in April 1958. “However,” Eisenhower continued, “the Soviet Union continues to reject the concept of an internationally supervised program to end weapons production and to reduce weapons stocks.”⁵⁵

Despite his efforts, the president knew his disarmament accomplishments were “meager, almost negligible.” “No matter how deeply preoccupied my associates and I became with other urgent situations,” Eisenhower later wrote, “never for a day was there absent from our minds and organized work the search for some kind of agreement that would mark a first, even if only a small, step toward a satisfactory disarmament plan.” Disarmament had been a moral imperative for the nation, he believed. “To lighten the burdens of armaments” meant “to lessen the likelihood of war,” and “any progress would be an important step toward the ultimate goal of establishing a universal peace with justice and freedom.”⁵⁶ Fear compelled governments to amass tremendous military power, Eisenhower believed, but that fear had not entirely destroyed the hope for peace. The building of armaments by both the United States and the Soviet Union created a system of deterrence which for the time at least was preventing war. But Eisenhower refused to accept the moral bankruptcy of succumbing to fear and relying on deterrence forever.⁵⁷ “Hope is more difficult to kill than men,” Eisenhower wrote, “and humanity is not ready spinelessly to accept the cynical conclusion that war is certain to recur, that the law of the jungle must forever be the rule of life.”⁵⁸ Only though the economic, military, and industrial strength provided for the United States by the nuclear weapon could Eisenhower negotiate a reduction or elimination of armaments and bolster America’s moral standing. “In the meantime, and pending some advance in this direction [of disarmament], we must stay strong,” Eisenhower wrote in his diary, “particularly in that type of power that the Russians are compelled to respect – namely, destructive power that can be carried suddenly and en masse directly against the Russian economic structure.”⁵⁹ His quest for peace through deterrence supplied the United States with moral strength as America demonstrated her desire to remove the paralyzing fear which had long defined the Cold War.

c. Some Basis of Hope

Eisenhower pursued a cessation to nuclear testing as a step toward disarmament and peace. While he valued nuclear testing because of its contribution to the buildup of U.S. military strength through improved nuclear weapons and to industrial strength through the development of clean nuclear weapons to be used in Project Plowshare, Eisenhower also emphasized the building of moral strength and America’s continued testing of nuclear weapons soon began to strain the world’ faith in the United States. How could the United States continually prepare and test new nuclear weapons while at the same time claiming to be working towards peace, some wondered? Eisenhower recognized and attempted to address the testing dilemma. On one hand, Eisenhower hoped to stop nuclear testing to demonstrate to the world the United States’ steadfast commitment to peace and her hopeful vision for the future. On the other hand, he sought to ease the growing controversy both inside and outside the United States over nuclear fallout from testing. Eisenhower lamented the harmful human effects of fallout in the United States and the South Pacific, but was never fully convinced that nuclear fallout was as dangerous as critics suggested. The real danger of nuclear testing, he believed, was increased international tension, a continuing arms race, and a greater likelihood of nuclear war between the superpowers. To Eisenhower, fallout was an unfortunate political issue which unnecessarily complicated his ability to negotiate disarmament and peace with the Soviet Union.