Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (45 page)

Congress responded quickly and enthusiastically. In so doing it ceded for practical purposes some of its constitutional authority to declare war. Few events in the history of the Cold War exposed so starkly the power of anti-Communist feelings and the way that these feelings abetted the expansion of executive power. The Formosa Resolution, as it was called, was well remembered by Lyndon Johnson, Senate majority leader in 1955, who resurrected it as a precedent in his effort nine years later to expand presidential power in dealing with Vietnam.

When the People's Republic stepped up shelling of Quemoy and Matsu in March, hawks in the administration reacted still more sharply. Radford wanted to give China a "bloody nose." Dulles, in public remarks cleared by Ike, announced that the United States was prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons there. At a press conference the President then added, "In any combat where these things [tactical nuclear weapons] 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."
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The threat to use nuclear weapons, even if only in a "strictly military" way, shook many people, including allies of the United States. American officials had spoken this way in the dark days of the Korean War in late 1950, at which time the mere suggestion had fanned a whirlwind of anxiety. So, too, in 1955. Who could be sure that nuclear weapons could be strictly controlled in a military situation? James Hagerty, Eisenhower's able press secretary, was so worried that he urged his boss to say nothing more if asked about the situation at a forthcoming press conference.

The President's response is central to the legend of his shrewdness as chief executive. "Don't worry, Jim," he is said to have joked to Hagerty. "If that question comes up, I'll just confuse them." The question did come up, and he managed to say nothing new.
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Thereafter shelling from the mainland soon abated. In mid-May it stopped, and the crisis receded. Quemoy and Matsu remained in Nationalist hands.

Then and later Eisenhower's handling of the Quemoy-Matsu "crisis" struck many people as ill advised. Opponents of his management go beyond assailing him for rattling nuclear weapons. They insist that he and Dulles virtually touched off the crisis by encouraging Chiang's provocative behavior—all to placate highly partisan Asia-firsters on the domestic scene. Ike, they add, then manipulated Cold War anxieties to scare the Congress into granting him unprecedented and potentially dangerous executive power. These critics say that the United States should have worked at promoting better relations with the People's Republic, both because China was by then a well-established major power in the region and because some Chinese-American rapprochement would have widened a growing wedge between China and the USSR.
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They question, finally, whether Ike's strong stand made much difference to the Chinese (who resumed shelling in 1958).

There is considerable wisdom in these criticisms. Eisenhower and Dulles did little to discourage Chiang and his American partisans, even though they recognized that the Nationalist leader was fomenting trouble. To this extent they played into Cold War passions, going so far as to use the threat of nuclear attack in defense of a few strategically insignificant islands. This was massive retaliation with a vengeance. It was mainly the restraint of the Chinese that in the end prevented more serious hostilities.
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Still, Eisenhower, who recognized the very limited strategic value and difficult defensibility of the islands, did manage to avoid military intervention. And to the public, who did not know about details, it seemed a well-managed business. Some later historians in fact have singled out Eisenhower's actions as a classic example of his shrewd leadership concerning foreign affairs. In particular they cite his adept handling of Congress, which gave him a useful blank check, and his capacity for ambiguity—with his comment to Hagerty as a sort of Exhibit Number One. By getting wide discretionary authority and then threatening—or so it seemed—the enemy with nuclear weapons, Eisenhower seemed to have orchestrated things in ways that he could control. In any event, the Chinese, perhaps uncertain of Ike's intent, finally stopped the shelling.
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To Americans eager for triumphs in a dangerous Cold War, Eisenhower appeared as something of a savior, especially because he had again kept the nation
out
of war. His popularity rating soared to 68 percent when the confrontation was over.
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At this point the Soviet leadership under Nikita Khrushchev, by then well established at home, made a few conciliatory gestures, including the signing of a peace treaty with Austria that ended Soviet military presence there. Dulles opposed any serious negotiations with the USSR, but Eisenhower seemed eager to sit down with his adversaries. The result in July 1955 was a "summit" conference in Geneva, the first such gathering since the Potsdam conference of 1945. The "spirit of Geneva" excited hopes for a new era of "coexistence." Russian and American delegates mingled, even in the bars, and people joked about "coexistence cocktails"—"you know, vodka and Coke." The evangelist Billy Graham, a world-renowned figure, conducted a revival there and pronounced the virtues of summits. Moses, he reminded people, had had a summit parley and received a ten-point directive that the heads of government would do well to examine.
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The most dramatic development of the conference occurred when Eisenhower set forth a proposal for "open skies." Taking off his glasses, he spoke directly and from memory to Khrushchev to say that the United States was prepared to swap sensitive information concerning its armed forces with the Soviet Union. He further recommended regular and frequent aerial inspection of military installations in both countries. He concluded with a spirited appeal: "I do not know how I could convince you of our sincerity in this matter and that we mean you no harm. I only wish that God would give me some means of convincing you of our sincerity and loyalty in making this proposal."
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Unfortunately for Eisenhower, God did not intervene to warm up the Russians. Khrushchev was a blunt, sometimes crude diplomatist, and he made no effort to hide his contempt for Eisenhower's proposal. "In our eyes," he told the President, "this is a very transparent espionage device. . . . You could hardly expect us to take this seriously."
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Khrushchev's reaction, while abrupt, was entirely understandable, for the open-skies idea was in part an American propaganda ploy which, having been laid on the table, Ike did little to follow up. As Eisenhower recognized, the Soviets already knew much more about American military installations—American skies were "open" to a wide range of observers—than the United States knew about Soviet sites. If Khrushchev had accepted open skies, he would have learned relatively little but would have bolstered American military intelligence. He thereby rejected the proposal, and the summit accomplished nothing of substance.
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As in the standoff of Quemoy-Matsu, however, Eisenhower's involvement in the Geneva conference worked well for him at home. Most Americans seemed pleased that he had made the effort to talk across the table with the Russians. They also applauded open skies, appreciating that the President was anxious to reduce the possibility of surprise attack. (Eisenhower, in fact, seems sincerely to have hoped that the Soviets would consider his idea.) And although the conference accomplished nothing, it did usher in a slight thaw in the Cold War that lasted (as it turned out) for almost five years. Again, therefore, Ike's popularity soared, this time to an amazing 79 percent in a Gallup poll of August 1955. The columnist James Reston commented, "The popularity of President Eisenhower has got beyond the bounds of reasonable calculation and will have to be put down as a national phenomenon, like baseball. The thing is no longer just a remarkable political fact but a kind of national love affair."
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A month later, while vacationing with his wife and in-laws in Denver, Eisenhower, then sixty-four, suffered a heart attack that sent him to the hospital for six weeks and forced him to recuperate carefully for a couple of months thereafter. He was fortunate, as was the United States, that no major foreign policy controversy erupted during his illness and recovery between September 1955 and February 1956. But one development did take place during this time that seemed especially promising for the future of Soviet-American relations.

That was an amazing speech that Khrushchev gave to the 1,400-odd top Soviet officials who were attending the twentieth Congress of the Communist party in Moscow in February 1956. Although the address was supposed to be secret, it soon leaked to the Russian people and to the West. Khrushchev attacked Stalin (his former boss and patron) as a paranoiac tyrant who had inflicted purges, show trials, terror, forced labor camps, and mass executions on the people of his country. Khrushchev called for the de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, maintained that capitalism and Communism were not incompatible, and seemed to welcome coexistence with the West. His speech was one of the most important documents of postwar Western history, not only because it held out the hope for a thaw in the Cold War but also because it excited hopes for reform in eastern Europe. It devastated Stalinist Communists throughout the world: the American Communist party, already weak, virtually fell apart. All these developments, of course, were welcome to Americans and to the Eisenhower administration as it readied itself for a re-election campaign later in the year.

The campaign offered few surprises. Virtually everyone was certain that Ike, still phenomenally popular, would win in a walk. But he had been ill, and that made his choice of running mate especially important. Eisenhower worried that Nixon, with whom he still had cool personal relations, would harm the GOP ticket. On two occasions, the second as late as April 1956, he offered Nixon a wide choice of Cabinet posts, specifically suggesting Defense. Nixon, however, correctly perceived the offers as a way of driving him out of the vice-presidency and refused. Eisenhower, who had no politically viable alternative, acquiesced. It was to be Ike and Dick once more.
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The Democrats tried again with Stevenson, who ran this time with Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee.
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Stevenson boldly tried to start a high-level debate about nuclear testing. But no one gave him much of a chance, and his opposition to testing commanded little backing amid the continuing anti-Communist consensus.
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Indeed, Stevenson struck some Democratic politicians as a poor campaigner. One was young Robert F. Kennedy, who joined the Stevenson team in the fall and who professed to be appalled. Stevenson, he recalled, had "no rapport with his audience and—no feeling for them—no comprehension of what campaigning required—no ability to make decisions. It was a terrible shock for me." (Stevenson, equally hostile, referred to "Bobby" as the "Black Prince.")
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As election day approached the Democrats relied heavily on TV spots. This made sense, for by 1956 there were 35 million households with sets in the United States, as opposed to 15.3 million in 1952. Some of the Democratic spots introduced "negative" ads for the first time, usually aimed at raising doubts about Nixon, should some unnamed awful thing just happen to occur to Ike. One spot showed a shifty-looking, narroweyed, small man, over whom loomed the letters
NIXON
. The audio added, "Nervous about Nixon?"
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In the last days of the campaign two of the most frightening foreign policy controversies of the postwar era interceded to command public attention. One, especially dangerous, broke out in the Middle East, where Cold War rivalries, Arab-Israeli hostilities, and Western hunger for control of oil had long heated up an inflammable mix for all concerned, including the United States. The mix grew hotter after 1954, when Gamal Abdal Nasser, a strong Arab nationalist, secured power in Egypt. Dulles tried to steer a tight course between support of Israel and of Nasser, whom he hoped to use as a buffer against a Russian presence in the oil-rich Middle East. He therefore agreed in December 1955 to lend Nasser $56 million for construction of the Aswan High Dam on the upper Nile. The dam was a key to Nasser's dreams of breaking the poverty of his country and promoting a rise to industrialization.

In mid-1956, however, the volatile mix neared ignition. Nasser recognized the People's Republic of China and purchased arms from Czechoslovakia in the Soviet bloc. Dulles, angry at Nasser's flirtation with the Communist orbit, abruptly canceled his offer of the loan. In July Nasser then shocked the world by nationalizing the Suez Canal, which had been controlled until then by a mostly British- and French-owned canal company. Revenues from ships passing through, Nasser said, would finance the dam. Although Eisenhower and Dulles tried to work out a settlement in the months that followed, the Israelis, British, and French quietly resolved to fight. On October 29, with the election campaign in the United States entering its final stages, the Israelis attacked, smashed Nasser's ill-trained forces, and began driving toward the canal. Two days later the British and the French, in what was obviously a preconceived plan worked out with the Israelis, began bombing Egyptian military installations. They then landed paratroopers with the aim of taking the canal.
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