Presidential transitions often prove difficult. Dwight D. Eisenhower had experienced one of the worst when he assumed power from Harry S. Truman in 1953. After an ugly campaign, Ike had concluded that Truman “was guilty of extreme partisanship, poor judgment, inept leadership and management, bad taste, and undignified behavior.”1 During his term, Ike told Richard Nixon, “he would not appear on the same platform with Truman no matter what was at stake.”2 Truman, for his part, had come to see Eisenhower as a hypocrite for his vicious campaign attacks on foreign policy choices that Ike had helped to reach and realize. Eisenhower had not previously objected to Truman’s approach to containment, the Berlin airlift, NATO, or the war in Korea. Secretary of State Dean Acheson recalled Eisenhower’s behavior at a November 1952 briefing: he “seemed embarrassed and reluctant to be with us—wary, withdrawn, and taciturn to the point ofsurliness.”3 Truman and Eisenhower met just once after the election, for a disagreeable session at the White House, in which Ike remained unresponsive to lessons Truman sought to teach. By contrast to that ordeal, the Eisenhower-Kennedy changeover appeared almost ideal. Although without particular warmth, their discussions did not devolve into bitter wrangling.
What John F. Kennedy encountered in his older predecessor was someone who, like Truman, wished to impart lessons learned. Kennedy recognized issues on which he might be able to enlist Eisenhower’s post-presidential support and those on which Ike would be less likely to help. He understood that Eisenhower might not agree with his future actions, but he did not anticipate public struggles with the former president.
Eisenhower never became a cheerleader for a new direction on China; that would have cast doubt on his presidential decisions, would have meant a sudden intensification of his interest, and would have elevated China above more important problems. But as this volume demonstrates, given that Ike thought diplomatic relations with China inevitable, the trade embargo foolish and self-defeating, and UN admission necessary and unavoidable, he would not have tried to block movement toward those goals. Eisenhower did not wish to strengthen a Communist regime in China, but he understood that the government would endure regardless of Washington’s position, and he did not want China policy to undermine international respect for the United States. Kennedy, it has been said, hoped to change American China policy, bringing the nation to a more flexible and open relationship with the Chinese.4 That may or may not be so, but it was not Dwight D. Eisenhower who stopped him.
This is not to say that Eisenhower was disengaged or passive. As noted earlier, new sources and fresh analysis have long since rescued the president from a standard narrative that assigned him a peripheral role in his own administration. It is clear that Eisenhower did not defer automatically to John Foster Dulles, or to anyone else. He had his own ideas and objectives regarding America’s place in the world.
The assessment of Eisenhower that gave him greater agency, insight, and impact, however, has developed into an indictment of his performance in unfamiliar locales, siding with imperialists rather than emerging nationalists for the sake of stability and anti-Communism. The president missed opportunities and made the wrong choices in places like Guatemala and Indonesia even though he was cognizant of the political ferment that was sweeping away vestiges of an old, discredited world. He also made mistakes in his relations with China, but China was not an arena in which he could act with little anxiety about the consequences.
Eisenhower, a man who intimately understood combat, feared the possibility of war with China. The president had no trouble supporting covert operations in small nations to oust left-leaning leaders. His record in Latin America and the Middle East made clear his enthusiasm for psychological campaigns and propaganda victories. He did not, however, want to fight the Soviet Union and believed that military clashes with the Chinese would quickly produce World War III. China might be poor and weak, but it could not be trifled with. He came closest to triggering war in the Taiwan Strait. Talk of blockading the Chinese coast or giving Chiang Kai-shek amphibious capabilities involved substantial risk. But Ike never meant to take the country that far. He engineered these situations to avoid, not occasion, conflict and succeeded in maneuvering around China, manipulating Taiwan, and capturing the right wing of his party and government.
What, then, does a close look at China policy say about Eisenhower and Dulles? Why did Eisenhower do so little to advance his constructive approach to China? As a decisive military leader imbued with the enormous authority of the American presidency, supported by a talented, experienced, and bold secretary of state, Eisenhower nonetheless did not adopt positive initiatives toward China.
To begin with, Eisenhower had problems of much higher salience. He remained an Atlanticist, as he had been before entering the White House and throughout his 8 years in office. The most compelling issues on the president’s mind included Germany, the Soviet Union, and Cuba, not China. Neither he nor Dulles considered China to be worth sacrifice of any domestic political or foreign policy objectives. China was and would remain an afterthought. Crisis in the Taiwan Strait compelled attention, but once violence subsided the president and secretary quickly moved on. Further, although they could not get a clear picture of developments inside China, its backwardness and poverty were manifest. Nothing about China in the 1950s argued for elevating it to a key foreign relations concern. Had Eisenhower actually threatened the incoming president, it surely would have been on an issue that meant a lot more to the nation and to him.
Eisenhower recognized the value that the portrait of an aggressive and irrational China offered. It kept allies, particularly in Asia, alert and wary of accommodating Beijing. More important, it freed Eisenhower to pursue a carefully modulated improvement in relations with Moscow. Rigidity on China deflected criticism of summits with the Soviets. Eisenhower could play his own version of Henry Kissinger’s later “China card.”
Intensifying Beijing’s alignment with and dependency on Moscow, moreover, could exacerbate strains in the Sino-Soviet relationship, giving the United States greater leverage with both states.5 Improving relations with the Soviet Union while vilifying China would, Eisenhower believed, reduce the likelihood of global crisis and at the same time dismay and distress the Chinese.
But actions toward and attitudes about China also hinged on values. Eisenhower, his cabinet, and his advisors adopted and retained a tough policy because of their own anti-Communist fervor. Reflecting prevailing views of the evils of Communism, they allowed their rhetoric and many of their actions to blur image and reality. Eisenhower and Dulles understood that Communism was not monolithic, but their approach to China implied that they regarded Beijing’s leaders as little more than puppets of Moscow.
As a result, they misled contemporaries and historians. Chinese leaders in the 1950s drew excessively grim conclusions about U.S. intentions. Eisenhower and Dulles were either unaware that this would occur or believed it was a necessary price to pay to control domestic opposition. More broadly, they wrongly convinced historians and pundits to think they shared the hysteria and hatred of China Lobbyists and right-wing partisans. As a result, analysts have allowed the U.S. Cold War vision in the 1950s to overwhelm their scrutiny of the record and have not listened to the things both men said that did not fit the Cold War template, leaving their more moderate ideas inexplicable.
Eisenhower’s view of public opinion also inhibited change. He perceived it as insistent and frightening but also uncertain, volatile, and contradictory. He could neither challenge it nor rely on it. Historian Robert Divine has suggested that Ike became a slave to his own popularity, refusing to pursue controversial initiatives because he wanted “to be liked by everyone.”6 And Andrew Bacevich, an international relations specialist, adds that Ike sought “to sustain the illusion he was fully in command” by “remain[ing] publicly silent” when outspokenness would have better served the nation.7 Thus the president saw himself as constrained and even helpless. He lamented to the National Security Council, “our trouble was that our domestic political situation compelled us to adopt an absolutely rigid policy” on trade and, he noted at other times, on everything Chinese.8
Strident opposition to change in China policy intimidated Eisenhower and Dulles. They believed the China Lobby and the congressional China bloc to be treacherous and feared their toxic effect on administration policies well beyond Chinese affairs. This is not surprising given the ability of the Lobby’s Committee of One Million to use “Congress as a propaganda unit” and “generate… the illusion that it could mobilize mass public opinion.”9 Eisenhower and Dulles had seen, and contributed to, a vicious backlash on China. Awareness that Truman and Acheson had failed in Asia, that war had engulfed them, and political opponents had pilloried them constituted persuasive barriers against venturing too far in front of what Eisenhower and Dulles identified as popular tolerance. They publicized the harshest aspects of their China policy in the hope that this would protect them against the Lobby and the broader Republican right. Their anti-Communism was, after all, political as well as a product of values and experience.
When various segments of the population began to rethink their automatic condemnation of all things Chinese, Eisenhower and Dulles nevertheless continued to exaggerate their resistance to change. To someone predisposed to seeing danger, danger lurked everywhere. The president and his secretary of state, accustomed to broad gauged hostility toward China and sensitive to potential political repercussions, reflexively dismissed evidence inconsistent with their assumptions.10 Franklin Roosevelt famously did the same after giving his 1937 Quarantine speech probing action against the Axis powers. The public and press reacted favorably, but the administration heard only the strident isolationists and dropped the initiative.11 Eisenhower and Dulles, given that polls revealed contradictory views and the results of surveys shifted regularly, judged that daring would be ill advised.
Eisenhower could have mounted a domestic campaign to win over congressional and popular opinion on the China issue, but he never did. As his secretary Ann Whitman recalled, “I believe that he came to office with a healthy fear of Congress,” but by the middle of his second term, he was standing up, not “kowtowing,” to members. He might have found the bully pulpit congenial even on the subject of China. But in no case did a strong, united constituency emerge to encourage him to take a risky initiative.
Eisenhower expressed his dissatisfaction with the U.S. approach to China in private to trusted aides and in classified meetings of the National Security Council where he had nothing to gain, or lose, by voicing complaints about his own administration policies. Those opinions were more genuine than the things he said openly to score partisan points. Nevertheless, he did not take a leadership role in educating the American people about the need for new policies that, he believed, would make more sense for the national interest and to America’s allies and friends abroad.
The president preoccupied himself with the costs of change, not the ways to make change happen. He wasn’t indecisive; he opted not to act because he feared political retribution that would exceed any gain. For instance, although he favored a UN seat for China and believed it to be inevitable, he dreaded the possibility that China’s admission would escalate demands at home that the United States withdraw.12
Only when deep-seated personal conviction motivated Eisenhower did he find a way to act. Eisenhower staunchly advocated that the United States apply the precepts of free enterprise, not governmental largesse, abroad. In some cases, foreign aid might be a catalyst, but for fundamental solution she turned to private investment and free trade.13 He upheld commercial restrictions against Beijing but did not approve of them. He argued on many occasions that they were counterproductive. Trade should be unfettered and would accomplish Washington’s goals more effectively than prohibitions and sanctions.14 An open China market would promote U.S. business interests and make possible positive influences on Chinese Communist economic and political practices. It also, Eisenhower asserted, promised “more security with fewer dollars.”15
Free trade was not just inherently good but also a critical factor in the United States’ relations with other governments. Eisenhower became increasingly aware that Washington’s unyielding posture on China trade restrictions was alienating many nations for whom the exchange of goods and services with China had become economically important. Europeans and Japanese, still hobbled by slow post–World War II recovery, wanted the raw materials and markets that China offered. They resented that America’s comparative prosperity made U.S. officials unsympathetic to their complaints. Thus whereas he only grumbled about recognition or UN admission, Eisenhower worked to roll back rules hampering trade. Resistance, emerging even from his cabinet, persuaded him to retain U.S. sanctions, but he could and did support U.S. allies.16 Trade mattered to him in a way that these similarly controversial issues did not.
Eisenhower’s entire career had been based on working with allies and friends to accomplish critical international objectives. If it had been possible to come to common positions during wartime, it should, he was sure, be possible to find solutions to a struggle over China, whose comparative importance did not appear high. To alienate people and governments for rules he did not believe in seemed ridiculous.
For U.S. relations with China, the 8 years of the Eisenhower administration saw a slow transition toward greater realism and flexibility. Barriers to interaction largely remained in place—although international trade rules relaxed, ambassadorial talks commenced, and war was avoided—but dissatisfaction with existing obstacles existed among national leaders and spread steadily, if quietly. Had Eisenhower been willing to act, he might have caught China at an approachable moment when it, too, longed for improved relations. Normalization might have begun well before 1969. Instead, U.S. China relations remained caught in a Cold War paradigm.
Eisenhower and Dulles never implemented a consistent and coherent policy toward China. On that snowy evening of January 19, 1960, Eisenhower had neither a strategy for a new China relationship to bequeath to his successor nor a threat ready to keep American policy static.