Who was last year’s “Person of the year?” The Protester. Similarrly in 1956 it was the Hungarian Freedom Fighter. I wonder what the article says about our response? One could speculate…
“The overwhelming first impression of American foreign policy from 1956 to 1961 was one of unrelieved failure” I have been waiting 10 years for a student to use that damning quote effectively in an essay. Maybe you will be the first.
So what were the failures? The revolution in Hungary, as you will read or have read, as far as it has anything to do with America and USFP, was a travesty (some would say). It laid bare the naked truth that the US would not confront the Soviets directly and the promises of liberation were empty.
Some might counter with the assertion though that possibly in the most dangerous of times Eisenhower succeeded. If we had confronted the Soviets in Hungary, as we will confront them five years hence in Cuba, would we have unleashed nuclear war? Maybe Eisenhower and his advisors knew that the cost of that even mere possibility was too great. It has long been said that no one hates war more than a member of the military. No one else sees the cost of war so thoroughly. Eisenhower had seen plenty of war. Maybe that “first impression” of failure in Hungary, in Cuba, in the Suez Canal crisis gives way to a more complete realization that there was some success. We avoided war in a time when war had become more dangerous than ever, when decisions made by just a few men (men) could have kept you and I from being here and could have plummeted humamity into some dark Cormac McCarthy book. Maybe we did succeed after all, if at least for that moment.
According to Ambrose, “Eisenhower’s major weakness was that he was an old man, head of an old party, surrounded by old advisers” (167). I noticed that Eisenhower (and to some extent Dulles) did not really anticipate the consequence of their actions. Especially with the Suez Canal crisis. I mean, what did Dulles really think was going to happen when they pulled out of helping build the Aswan Dam. Obviously nothing good. No one could have predicted it would have led to such drastic problems with France and Britain. The Suez Canal Crisis ruined Eisenhower’s promise of keeping American troops of the ground. On Jan. 5th, 1957, he instated the Eisenhower Doctrine, allowing the entrance of American forces in the Middle East to protect from the Soviet Union entering the “vacuum”, which, one could argue, was caused by bad relations with Nassar.
Eisenhower stated that he did not want to turn America into a “garrison state”. According to Merriam-Webster, a “garrison state” is “a state maintained by military power”. As you stated in your blog Mr. Steussy Eisenhower has a lot of military experience and would want anything but war, and perhaps that’s why there was a decrease in military spending. Furthermore, Eisenhower dealt with the crisis over Berlin as if it were “abnormal” and that “modifications were necessary” (164). Eisenhower seemed to have avoided everything by “denying a crisis even existed” for “a crisis can only exist when the President says it exists” (164). Eisenhower strongly believed that if America entered a nuclear war during this time, the nation would become less secure. And so maybe not continuing the arms race could have stopped a war from occurring.
As you said Mr. Steussy, there was not much done (militarily wise), however, he did avoid enormous confrontations that could have resulted in a nuclear war. Yes his bias did affect of not sending troops ahead and fight initially, however he understood, as you had said, what war was like. The reason I also think that Eisenhower had failures during his presidency is because Khrushchev did not want to be left behind and acted quickly. “Khrushchev badly needed a cold war victory, both for internal political reasons and to compete with China for followers’ (166). If Eisenhower had acted with such desperation throughout his whole presidency he could have possibly been able to succeed.
Just like what Sam said, there wasn’t much done military wise, but Eisenhower’s main goal was to avoid war. The Democrats thought the US wasn’t going forward and that it wasn’t dong enough thus causing the US to start losing the Cold War, but according to Kissinger that (avoiding war) was one of his outstanding achievements. I agree with the others, that Eisenhower’s military experience would give him reasons to want to avoid a war.
Eisenhower definitely has an interesting military complex, In chp. 8 we know tyhat the Department of Defense is frustrated with him because he won’t increase spending and he cuts the military down. Eisenhower defintely uss the military precautiously. He deploys them in Lebanon but he won’t in Egypt. From his actions I can see why he warns against an industrial military complex in his farewell speech.
I think it is a bit ironic that Eisenhower seems to be opposed to building up the military. But at the same time I think he just shifted the military’s focus. Instead of conventional weapons and ground troops, he increased the number of nuclear weapons and Ambrose says that the U.S. got into an arms race. The Eisenhower policy of using threats as a military tactic and called “brinkmanship” worked in some cases. For example, it worked in Formosa (Taiwan) to avoid war and contain communism in Asia because China withdrew from the islands of Quemoy and Matsu. In another case, by putting the spy planes, or U2’s, in the Soviet air space, we could see if the Soviet Union had superior nuclear weapons and Eisenhower found that Soviet nuclear weapons were not developed as much as Khrushchev said.
In all of the readings we have done, the Soviet Union is always portrayed as the bad guy, the dominating force that will do anything to benefit themselves, regardless of the negative effects on others. While reading this chapter, Ambrose gave a completely different perspective on the Soviet Union, one that showed them being to the point, but understanding to some extent. On November 5, when Britain and France were mere hours away from advancing into Egypt, Khrushchev told them to immediately retreat, and he wouldn’t destroy them. He gave them the chance, rather than presumably taking action. Along with this, Khrushchev knew that Eisenhower acted to protect Western oil holdings, and with this, decided not to intervene as long as he held down the scope of the intervention.