Consolidation and Conflict: Eisenhower, 1953- 1960

1. Consolidation and Conflict: Eisenhower, 1953-1960

2. Introduction. • A. Over twenty years of depression, hot war, cold war, and limited war had left Americans yearning for normalcy.

3. The Eisenhower Mood A. The New President. • 1. Ike embodied the mood for normalcy. He was a comforting leader whom Americans hoped would heal the nations’ wounds. • 2. However, his surface geniality and affability concealed a man who could be cold and shrewd, hot tempered, crafty, and with an impressive instinct for self-preservation.

4. The Eisenhower Mood • 3. He recognized his non-political posture was his greatest asset; the public perception of a warm-hearted man above the battle who did not always know what his administration was doing; of a president who deferred to his immediate subordinates in their area of expertise; who was imprecise in press conferences. • a. He kept his complexity and deviousness carefully concealed.

5. The Eisenhower Mood B. Eisenhower economics. • 1. Eisenhower offered the nation "Modern Republicanism": accepting in practice the New Deal, tempered by reductions in public spending and the activity of the federal government. • 2. His cabinet was filled with former businessmen, and his administration was responsive to the needs of business.

6. The Eisenhower Mood • 3. He was concerned with balancing the budget and with controlling inflation. • 4. His most ambitious domestic initiative was the Interstate Highway Act (1956), which committed the nation to private automobiles as its principal form of transportation. • 5. In general, Eisenhower disliked federal power and proposed to transfer considerable federal functions to the states or private enterprise. He never accomplished this goal.

7. The Eisenhower Mood C. McCarthy: zenith. • 1. Eisenhower proved reluctant to confront McCarthy, seeing confronting the Senator as giving him credibility. • 2. Free from Eisenhower's interference, McCarthy used his subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Government Operations to swagger through the executive branch in reckless pursuit of alleged communists and their "fellow travelers." • a. His main target was the State Department: veteran diplomats were fired, McCarthy's handpicked man installed as director of personnel, and books banned from State Department libraries and even burned.

8. The Eisenhower Mood • 3. What started as an effort to guard national security became a heresy hunt employing guilt by association, loyalty oaths, testimony of secret informers, interrogation and intimidation by legislative committees.

9. The Eisenhower Mood D. McCarthy: decline. • 1. McCarthy was brought down by the end of the Korean War, which undercut the emotional base which had helped support him and his inability to substantiate his ever escalating charges. • 2. The Army-McCarthy Hearings (April-June 1954). • a. Televised to the nation, they for the first time exposed his tactics to a wide audience. • b. The Senate censured McCarthy in December 1954, effectively ending his effectiveness • 3. Legacy: • a. Broken lives. • b. By demanding executive files, which Eisenhower successfully denied, McCarthy ironically strengthened the doctrine of "executive privilege."

10. The Eisenhower Mood E. The battle over desegregation. • 1. Truman's actions in favor of civil rights made it a national issue. • 2. Rejected elsewhere, civil rights activists turned to the courts. • 3. The Vinson Supreme Court sought to work toward civil rights within the framework provided by Plessyv. Ferguson--"separate but equal." They rejected separate facilities when they could be proven unequal.

11. The Eisenhower Mood • 4. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) • a. The Supreme Court under new chief justice Earl Warren overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine declaring separate educational facilities to be "inherently unequal." • b. A year later, the Court ordered school authorities to move toward desegregating public schools "with all deliberate speed." • 5. Southern states resisted the order, particularly South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

12. The Eisenhower Mood F. Crisis in Little Rock (Fall 1957). • 1. Eisenhower declined to endorse the Brown decision and remained skeptical about government efforts to promote civil rights. • 2. Southern resistance climaxed in Arkansas, when Governor OrvalFaubus' attempted to block the enrollment of nine black students at Central High School in Little Rock. • 3. His challenge to federal authority (the Supreme Court) forced a reluctant Eisenhower to send federal troops to Little Rock to restore order and see that the black children were enrolled.

13. The Eisenhower Mood • 4. Civil Rights Act of 1957: Congress authorized the Justice Department to seek injunctions on behalf of black voting rights. • 5. Civil Rights Act of 1960: Congress authorized the appointment of federal referees to safeguard voting rights. • 6. The Supreme Court extended its Brown philosophy, striking down segregation in interstate commerce, public buildings, airports, interstate bus terminals, parks and other public recreation facilities.

14. The Eisenhower Mood • 7. Congress and the Supreme Court left untouched de facto segregation. • 8. Blacks, such as Thurgood Marshall, lawyer for the NAACP and clergyman Martin Luther King Jr., with his philosophy of non-violent civil disobedience, took an increasingly active role in the battle to strike down segregation. • a. King's 1955 Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott. • b. Lunch counter "sit-ins" during the winter if 1959-60.

15. The Eisenhower Mood G. The Warren Court. • 1. Eisenhower came to regret his appointment of Earl Warren as Supreme Court Chief Justice. He turned out to have a spacious view of the Constitution and a humane approach to the law. • 2. His approach was supported by further Eisenhower appointees to the Court and holdovers appointed by FDR. • 4. Critics of the Court claimed it was acting in manner more properly left to legislatures or the executive.

16. The Eisenhower Mood I. Eisenhower's second term. • 1. Despite Democrats gaining control of both houses of Congress in 1954 and serious personal illness, Eisenhower decided to run for re-election in 1956. Nixon stayed on as Vice-President. • 2. The Democrats renominated Adlai Stevenson, with Estes KeFauver as his running-mate (useless fact). 3. The Election results. a. The Electoral College. • 1) Eisenhower: 457 • 2) Stevenson: 73 b. Popular Vote • 1) Eisenhower: 56.7% • 2) Stevenson: 42.1% • c. A decisive victory for Eisenhower, although the Democrats slightly increased their majorities in both houses of Congress.

17. The Eisenhower Mood • 4. The Second Term. • a. Less successful than his first. • b. Eisenhower moved too slowly to combat high unemployment in 1958 (7.5%). • c. His administration was also tarnished by scandals which led to the resignation of a number of administration officials. • d. The 1958 mid-term election was a Democratic landslide.

18. The American People in the Fifties A. A homogenized society? • 1. After twenty years of crisis, Americans craved security rather than adventure, comfort rather than challenge. • 2. More and more Americans were spending their days working in large impersonal bureaucratic organizations, and their nights in great suburban enclaves; both fostering a bland conformity.

19. The American People in the Fifties • 3. Television served the cause of homogenizing America. The number of sets owned soared from 3.2 million in 1950 to 50 million by 1960. • 4. Religion was pervaded by the "cult of reassurance," portraying God as the everlasting source of comfort and protection.

20. The American People in the Fifties B. Stirrings under the surface. • 1. The intellectual community weighed the decade and found it smug. • a. They criticized conformity in literature. • b. The "beat generation" expressed non-conformity, although in a more chaotic and pitiful way than the "lost generation" had.

21. Republican Foreign Policy A. Ending the Korean War. • 1. Eisenhower fulfilled his promise to visit Korea and worked tirelessly to bring the war to a close. • 2. The sticking point in negotiations was whether, and how, prisoners of war should be repatriated. • a. Many North Korean and Chinese prisoners did not wish to be repatriated • b. China and North Korea insisted on compulsory repatriation.

22. Republican Foreign Policy • 3. Either Eisenhower's threat to expand the scope of the war (i.e. use nuclear weapons) or Stalin's death in March 1953 softened the Communist negotiating position. • a. An armistice was signed July 27, 1953. • b. It provided for voluntary repatriation of POWs. • 4. 54,629 Americans died in the Korean War.

23. Republican Foreign Policy • B. Eisenhower and Dulles. • 1. Eisenhower's hopes to be a man of peace were at odds with his choice for Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, who publicly advocated "liberation" instead of "containment." • 2. However, despite Dulles' rhetoric American policy remained essentially one of containment, probably due to Eisenhower's caution and the fact that he retained behind-the-scenes control of foreign policy. • a. Eisenhower played "good cop" and Dulles "bad cop." • b. Dulles threatened "liberation" and "massive retaliation" while Eisenhower generously offered "atoms for peace" and "open skies."

24. Republican Foreign Policy C. Massive retaliation. • 1. In contrast to Truman's containment based on superiority based on conventional forces (as embodied in NSC-68), Eisenhower looking to cut the cost of containment by making nuclear weapons the center of American strategy. • 2. The "new look" also moved from a defensive to an offensive view of containment, by making massive nuclear retaliation a possible response to aggression. • 3. The Dulles/Eisenhower approach came to be known as "brinksmanship": the "art" of taking things to the brink without going to war.

25. Republican Foreign Policy D. Eisenhower and Soviet Union. • 1. The death of Stalin in 1953 seemed an opportunity to warm American-Soviet relations. • a. The opportunity largely not taken up. • 2. Dulles opposed a summit until 1955, when Winston Churchill persuaded him to drop his opposition. • 3. The shoot-down of Francis Gary Powers and his U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union scuttled the summit between Eisenhower and Khrushchev scheduled for Paris in May 1960.

26. Republican Foreign Policy E. Supplementing massive retaliation. • 1. Dulles responded to the problem of local wars (not feasibly handled by massive retaliation) by proposing to replace American conventional forces by a network of allies recruited through bilateral military assistance programs and in some parts of the world through collective military pacts (such as SEATO in Asia and CENTO in the Middle East.

27. Republican Foreign Policy • 2. For direct American intervention abroad, Eisenhower turned from the military to the CIA. CIA covert action grew more ambitious and aggressive. (The Good Shepherd) • a. It helped overthrow governments in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), but failed in Indonesia (1958). • b. It helped supposedly pro-western governments come to power in Egypt (1954) and Laos (1959), and organized an expedition of anti-Castro Cubans in their failed invasion of Cuba in 1960, then plotted Castro's assassination in collaboration with American gangsters. • c. It also sought to assassinate pro-communist Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba.

28. Republican Foreign Policy F. Institutionalizing the Cold War. • 1. As the Cold War conferred power, appropriations, and public influence on bureaucracies, their stake in conflict steadily increased. • 2. This institutionalization also took place in the Soviet Union. • 3. Both sides increasingly saw local conflicts in global terms, political conflicts in moral terms, and relative differences as absolute differences.

29. Nationalism and the Superpowers A. Nationalism versus the Cold War. • 1. Containment was a reasonable response to Stalinism in Europe. • 2. However, it did not work well in regions increasingly convulsed by demands for political and economic independence against colonial or neocolonial control. • 3. These new states interest in American-Soviet conflict was limited to the extent they could play one side off the other in the quest for assistance against their own enemies.

30. Nationalism and the Superpowers B. Crisis in East Asia. • 1. Eisenhower heavily subsidized the French (80% of their costs) in their war against the communist-led Viet Minh nationalist movement in Indochina. • 2. However, Eisenhower refused to have American troops intervene to save the French at Dienbienphu in 1954. • 3. He disapproved of French negotiations with the Viet Minh after the fall of Dienbienphu and threw American support behind the anti-communist Diem regime that arose in the South. • 4. Starting in 1958, Diem's government came under guerilla warfare from the National Liberation Front or Viet Cong. • 5. Eisenhower perceived Communist China behind unrest in Indochina, and the Soviet Union behind China.

31. Nationalism and the Superpowers C. Nationalism in the Middle East. • 1. American policy goals in this region. • a. Prevent Soviet expansion in the region. • b. Maintain access to Arab oil. • c. Ensure the survival of the State of Israel. • 2. Reasons a & b factored in the CIA-organized coup against Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran in 1953.

32. Nationalism and the Superpowers • 3. Egypt • a. The center of Arab nationalism in the 1950s. • b. Dulles upset, by Nasser's dalliance with the Soviets, which caused him to withdraw an American offer to help fund the Aswan Dam. • c. Nasser retaliated by seizing the Suez Canal. • d. Britain, France, and Israel launched an expedition to retake the Canal. • e. Eisenhower publicly disowned the expedition and worked against it in the UN (with the Soviet Union!!).

33. Nationalism and the Superpowers • 4. Despite the potential of Arab nationalism, the Eisenhower administration still saw Soviet penetration as the main problem in this area. • a. The Eisenhower Doctrine (1957): the United States would protect any nation in the region who requested it from communist aggression. • b. Used in 1958 to protect the pro-western government in Lebanon; 14,000 American troops landed there.

34. Nationalism and the Superpowers D. Nationalism in Latin America. • 1. FDR's Good Neighbor Doctrine was ignored, as the post-war American governments oriented foreign policy in Latin America from a Cold War vantage-point. • a. The Guatemalan regime overthrown by the CIA in 1954 in support of the United Fruit Company and with the excuse that it was vulnerable to Marxism. • 2. Nixon stoned and spat on during his visits to Peru and Venezuela in 1958.

35. Nationalism and the Superpowers • 3. Cuba. • a. The pro-American Batista regime overthrown by forces led by Fidel Castro, a romantic Marxist nationalist in 1959. • b. After initial conciliatory American gestures, Castro's expropriation of American property in Cuban and alliance with the Soviets turned the Eisenhower administration against him. • c. The Cuban Revolution altered Washington's indifference to Latin American demands for economic development and national self-assertion.

36. The United States and the Soviet Union A. Khrushchev the adventurer. • 1. The Soviets saw third world nationalism and anti-colonialism as a potent weapon against the western powers. • 2. They spread the message that communism offered these countries the fastest road to modernization. • 3. Backed by Soviet technological accomplishments like Sputnik (1957), this argument had force.

37. The United States and the Soviet Union • 4. Khrushchev vastly expanded Soviet activity in the Third World, appearing eager to exploit every western vulnerability. • 5. He also reopened the Berlin question in 1958. • 6. The launching of Sputnik in 1957, started talk of a "missile gap" in the United States, although Eisenhower (correctly) was skeptical

38. The United States and the Soviet Union B. Khrushchev the co-exister. • 1. Khrushchev also tried to de-Stalinize the Soviet Union and even spoke of "peaceful coexistence" with the West. • 2. The Soviets were also concerned with the destructive potential of nuclear weapons and in March 1958 suspended testing. • 3. His overtures may have been a sign of deteriorating Sino-Soviet relations, starting in 1958. • 4. Yet Khrushchev's rhetoric continued to bounce back and forth between belligerence and conciliation. • 5. He toured the United States in 1959, but the U-2 incident scuttled a summit with Eisenhower in 1960.

39. End of the Eisenhower Era A. The election of 1960. • 1. Took place in atmosphere troubled by a weakening economy and seeming decline in American influence abroad. • 2. Vice-President Nixon won the Republican nomination, with Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts as his running mate. • 3. The Democrats nominated Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, with runner-up Lyndon Johnson as his running mate. • 4. The campaign was marked by innovations: television debates (which helped Kennedy).

40. End of the Eisenhower Era • 5. The theme of the campaign was how to deal with seeming American decline. • a. Kennedy promised his "New Frontier." • 6. The Election results. • a. The Electoral College. • 1) Kennedy: 303 • 2) Nixon: 219 • b. Popular Vote • 1) Kennedy: 49.9% • 2) Nixon: 49.6% • c. The closest election since 1888: Kennedy's popular margin of victory only 119,057 votes.

41. End of the Eisenhower Era B. The Eisenhower Record. • 1. In his farewell speech he left his warning against the "military-industrial complex." • 2. His most significant domestic legacy was to acquiesce to--and legitimize--the New Deal. • a. He did little to tackle the developing problems of race, the cities, the environment, raw materials and energy. • b. In foreign policy he bequeathed a runaway CIA and declining American influence in the world. • c. Yet the peace and prosperity that had been overwhelming theme of his presidency, saw him leave it still quite popular.