Abstract
The president continued to seek a balance between United States national security requirements and its healthy economy. US national security policy was also closely concerned with America’s cold war policy and its foreign policy in general. It would have been, of course, easier for Eisenhower to consummate the New Look if he had had strong and united support from the Republican party. Eisenhower’s relationship with the Republican Old Guard was a difficult one. He described the majority leader, Senator Knowland (who had succeeded senator Taft in July 1953) as ‘cumbersome’, a man who did not have ‘the sharp mind and the great experience that Taft did’. Despite their differences over foreign policy and national security issues, Eisenhower admired Taft for his loyalty to the Republican party and for his leadership ability in Congress.1 By contrast, the president was impatient with Knowland’s extremist views — the Californian senator once compared the defence of Dien Bien Phu to the defence of ‘the Alamo and also Bataan and Corregidor’. Eisenhower regarded the senator’s demand for a US naval ‘blockade’ off the coast of mainland China (during the first offshore crisis), or for a total trade embargo of Communist China, as ‘self-defeating’ or ‘impossibly stupid’.2
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Notes and References
For a full account of the Oppenheimer case, see Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War 1953–1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 45–112 ff.
Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace, pp. 45–55; For Admiral Strauss, see Robert Divine, Blowing on the Wind: The Nuclear Test Ban Debate 1954–1960 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 9–11.
Fried, Nightmare in Red, pp. 138, 141. See also Edwin R. Bayley, Joe McCarthy and the Press (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981), pp. 202–10.
See Broadwater, The Anti-Communist Crusade; also Blanche Wiesen Cook, The Declassified Eisenhower — A Divided Legacy of Peace and Political Warfare (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1981), pp. 158–61.
For the best and recent studies of American policy towards Latin America during the Eisenhower administration see: Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982);
Stephen Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America — The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988)
and for a definitive account of Latin-American-US relations, see Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (2nd edn) (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1993). The following are also useful: Stephen Rabe, ‘Dulles, Latin America and Cold War Anticommunism’, in Immerman (ed.), Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War, pp. 159–88; (on the Guatemalan situation)
Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)
and S. Schlesinger and S. Kingzer, Bitter Fruit (New York: Garden City, 1982);
for useful recent historiographical studies on US-Latin American relations, see Mark T. Gilderhus, ‘An Emerging Synthesis? U.S.-Latin American Relations since the Second World War’, Diplomatic History 16:3 (summer 1992), pp. 429–52; William O. Walker III, ‘The future of Inter-American Relations: What Must Be Done’ ibid., pp. 453–61.
See also the British perspective on America’s policy for Guatemala, John W. Young, ‘Great Britain’s Latin American Dilemma: The Foreign Office and the Overthrow of “Communist” Guatemala, June 1954’, The International History Review 8:4 (November, 1986), pp. 573–92 and
Sharon L. Meers, ‘The British Connection: How the United States covered its traces in the 1954 Coup in Guatemala’, Diplomatic History, 16:3 (summer 1992), pp. 409–28.
Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala, p. 5; Rabe, ‘Dulles, Latin America and Anticommunism’, p. 176; For a different perspective on the role of the CIA, see Frederick W. Marks III, ‘The CIA and Castillo Armas in Guatemala, 1954: New Clues to an Old Puzzle’, Diplomatic History 14:1 (winter, 1990) pp. 67–86.
Ambrose, Eisenhower vol. 2, p. 111–2; Ambrose and Immerman, Ike Spies, p. 199; for one of the best and recent studies on US-Iranian relations, see J.A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), esp. pp. 51–97.
See, William Stivers, ‘Eisenhower and the Middle East’ in Melanson and Mayers (eds), Reevaluating Eisenhower, pp. 192–95 ff; Diane B. Kunz, The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 14–30 ff.
Greenstein, Hidden-Hand, p. 73; Robert Donovan, Confidential Secretary: Ann Whitman’s 20 Years with Eisenhower and Rockefeller (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1988), pp. 44–6.
James R. Killian, Jr. Sputnik, Scientists, and Eisenhower — A memoir of the First Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT Press, 1982), pp. 67–8.
NSC 247th and 250th mtgs, 5, 26 May 1955 FRUS 1955–7, vol. 19, pp. 78, 82; John Prados, The Soviet Estimate — US Intelligence Analysis and Soviet Strategic Forces (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 41–2.
Bernhard G. Bechhoefer, Postwar Negotiations for Arms Control (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1961), pp. 29–35; Graebner, ‘The Sources of Postwar Insecurity’, p. 24; Divine, Eisenhower and the Cold War, pp. 114, 118.
Oppenheimer, ‘Atomic Weapons and American Policy’, Foreign Affairs, 31:4 (July 1953), pp. 529, 531; see also NSC 146th mtg, 27 May 1954, FRUS 1952–4, vol. 2, pp. 1173–4.
Eisenhower, Mandate, p. 252; Adams, Firsthand Report, p. 112; Robert Bowie, ‘Eisenhower, Atomic Weapons and Atoms for Peace’ in Joseph F. Pilat, Robert E. Pendley, and Charles K. Ebinger (eds), Atoms for Peace: An Analysis after Thirty Years (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1985), pp. 19–20; Hewlett and Holl, Atoms For Peace, pp. 59–62.
Brands Jr, Cold Warriors, p. 128; Divine, Eisenhower and the Cold War, pp. 111–12; Griffith, Ike’s Letters, p. 115; see also Rebecca Grant, ‘Eisenhower and the Evolution of Strategic Thinking, 1953–58’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, London University, 1989), pp. 47–54 ff; Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace, pp. 65–7, 85
Dulles to Bohlen (letter), 9 October 1953; Dulles’s minute (for Eisenhower), 23 October 1953; Wilson to Jackson (letter) and JCS memorandum (for Wilson), 30 October 1953; NSC 170th mtg, 12 November 1953; Dulles to Bowie (phone call), 1 December 1953, all in FRUS 1952–4, vol. 2, pp. 1226–7, 1234–5, 1240–3, 1244–5, 1250; Robert Bowie, ‘Eisenhower and Atoms for Peace’, pp. 20–2; Thomas Soapes, ‘A Cold Warrior Seeks Peace: Eisenhower’s Strategy for Nuclear Disarmament’, Diplomatic History 4, (winter 1980), pp. 61–2.
Martin McCauley, The Soviet Union since 1917 (London and New York: Longman, 1990) pp. 170–4 ff.
Frank Roberts to P.F. Hancock (letter), 27 April 1955, FO 371/118210, PRO; for recent studies of the Austrian peace treaty, see Rolf Steininger, ‘1955: The Austrian State Treaty and the German Question’, Diplomacy and Statecraft 3:3 (November 1992) pp. 494–522;
Günter Bischof, ‘The Anglo-American Powers and Austrian Neutrality, 1953–1955’, Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs vol. 42 (1992), pp. 368–93; Bruno Thoß, ‘Modellfall Österreich? Der österrichische Staatsvertrag und die deutsche Frage 1954/5’ in MGFA (ed.), Zwischen Kaltem Krieg und Entspannung, pp. 93–136;
P. Jardin, ‘“Östetreich wird frei”: le traité d’Etat autrichien du 15 mai 1955’, Relations Internationales 71 (autumn 1992), pp. 311–25.
Andrei Alexandrov-Agentov, ‘Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko’, International Affairs (Moscow), August 1991, pp. 104–5; Andrei Gromyko, Memories (trans. by Harold Shukman) (London: Hutchinson, 1989), pp. 230–1.
Hoover to Dulles, Paris, tel. 7, 9 May 1955, FRUS 1955–7, vol. 5, pp. 177–8; Dulles to Eisenhower, tels. 3, 12 and 13, 8, 9 and 9, May 1955, ibid., pp. 170–7; P. Gullen, ‘Le problème allemand dans les rapports Est-Ouest de 1955 à 1957’, Relations Intennationales 71 (autumn 1992), pp. 299–300;
A. Varsori, ‘Le gouvernement Eden et l’Union soviétique (1955–1956): de l’espoir à la désillusion’, Relations Internationales 71 (autumn 1992), pp. 276–9.
Ambrose, Eisenhower vol. 2, p. 204; Piers Brendon, Ike — The Life and Times of Dwight D. Eisenhower (London: Secker & Warburg, 1987), p. 260; see also NSC 210th mtg, 12 August 1954, FRUS 1952–4, vol. 2, pp. 1482–8.
W.W. Rostow, Open Skies — Eisenhower’s Proposal of July 21, 1955 (Texas: University of Texas Press, 1982), especially, pp. 3–6, 56, and see also Appendix L (Stassen to Rockefeller (letter), 27 July 1955), p. 184.
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© 1996 Saki Dockrill
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Dockrill, S. (1996). Aspirations for Atomic Peace. In: Eisenhower’s New-Look National Security Policy, 1953–61. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372337_7
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