Authors: Jim Newton
At the height of the controversy, Eisenhower delivered the commencement address at Dartmouth College. He was accompanied that afternoon by John McCloy, one of those infuriated by McCarthy’s attack on books, and Judge Joseph M. Proskauer, a leading liberal jurist and partner in one of New York’s preeminent law firms. The three men sat together on the dais before Ike began to speak, and Proskauer remarked that he was upset by reports of American libraries in Germany getting rid of books. At first, Eisenhower laughed, saying it could not be true since McCloy had personally informed him that the libraries carried books critical of him. Proskauer then asked McCloy whether some books were being dropped because of their authors’ politics. McCloy acknowledged that it was true, and the judge then confronted Ike: “Mr. President, I think you are wrong about that.” Books were in fact being removed, and the State Department was behind it. Ike listened quietly, and Proskauer concluded with a suggestion: “Mr. President, if you have anything to say about book burning, there is no better time than now and no better place than the campus of Dartmouth College.”
Eisenhower’s remarks were scripted. He urged the graduates to find meaningful joy in life, to pursue that joy with courage and conviction, to challenge prejudice and injustice as matters of patriotism. Near the end of his speech, however, Eisenhower departed from his text. “Don’t join the book burners,” he urged. “Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book as long as any document does not offend your sense of decency. That should be the only censorship.”
Ike returned to his seat. Proskauer congratulated him: “You have double thanks for what you said, from Mr. McCloy and me.”
Those who had urged Eisenhower to challenge McCarthy were thrilled. The
New York Herald Tribune
, Eisenhower’s favorite paper, hailed the gesture that could “rally the nation to a defense of the right to know.” The
New York Times
welcomed the president’s “faith in the inquiring and open mind.” The
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
characterized the speech as “the finest expression on the spirit and practice of Americanism to come from Dwight D. Eisenhower, not only since he entered the White House, but since he entered public life.”
But no sooner had the president uttered those remarks than he began to back away from their implications. He publicly insisted he was still unwilling to tangle with McCarthy—to dwell on “personalities,” as he put it. He assured Dulles that his comments had been directed not at the State Department “but to the general proposition of freedom of thought.” Even while he denounced book burning, Ike recognized that federal money should not be used to “buy or handle books which were persuasive of Communism.” The direct confrontation hoped for by so many was once again avoided. McCarthy’s critics worried that Ike had lost his nerve.
Fencing with McCarthy over book burning was tedious business and distracted from the Cold War moment of genuine consequence during those same months. On March 5, 1953, Joseph Stalin, after a lifetime of high blood pressure and weeks of deteriorating health, at last relinquished his hold on life and cruel dominion over his nation. Stalin’s death was among the most anticipated moments of mid-century American foreign policy. Nevertheless, it caught U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers flat-footed. Allen Dulles told Ike that Stalin was on his deathbed just after 6:00 a.m. on March 4 (Washington time), and Eisenhower summoned Dulles, C. D. Jackson, and James Hagerty to discuss a public statement. It was, they recognized, a moment of profound but uncertain possibility. They labored over the draft, then presented it to the members of the National Security Council.
The meeting opened at 10:30 a.m. Eisenhower explained that he saw this as a “propitious” moment “for introducing the right word into the Soviet Union,” an opportunity, more psychological than diplomatic, to speak directly to the Soviet people. George Humphrey seconded the text as written, but Charlie Wilson then worried about the Soviet government’s reaction; Dulles reserved comment on the statement but warned that these were treacherous waters. “It was certainly a gamble” to suggest that the Soviet people should contest their leadership in a time of mourning, Dulles cautioned.
They argued for nearly half an hour, but Eisenhower would not be talked out of saying something. The full council edited the statement a line at a time, issuing it just before the Soviet embassy notified the press. Official word of Stalin’s death had yet to be released, so Ike’s comments were crafted as a message of sympathy to Soviet citizens worried over Stalin’s health. “The thoughts of America,” the statement noted, “go out to all the peoples of the U.S.S.R.” Ike’s words, sent to a land of official atheism, dwelled on the common faiths of people split by ideology and statecraft:
They [the Russian people] are the children of the same God who is the Father of all peoples everywhere. And like all peoples, Russia’s millions share our longing for a friendly and peaceful world. Regardless of the identity of government personalities, the prayer of us Americans continues to be that the Almighty will watch over the people of that vast country and bring them, in His wisdom, opportunity to live their lives in a world where all men and women and children dwell in peace and comradeship.
The statement confirmed that the Eisenhower White House could work quickly and eloquently (the phrase “us Americans” notwithstanding) and that it could appeal to a common humanity. And yet Eisenhower was astonished to discover that there was no plan for responding to Stalin’s death. “Ever since 1946 … all the so-called experts have been yapping about what would happen when Stalin dies,” he fumed to the cabinet later that week. “Well, he’s dead … We have no plan. We are not even sure what difference his death makes.”
The NSC directed the CIA to assess the Soviet situation. On March 31, the agency returned with its findings: “We have no reliable inside intelligence on thinking in the Kremlin. Our estimates of Soviet long range plans and intentions are speculations drawn from inadequate evidence.” The Cold War had entered a much-anticipated new phase, but the administration had no idea what it meant.
Those who hoped for diminished tension were to be disappointed. Soviet belligerence and jockeying for advantage continued without interruption. In August, the Soviets announced that they had exploded a hydrogen bomb. Although the weapon was a hybrid, combining elements of a fission and a fusion bomb, it nevertheless convincingly established that the post-Stalin Soviet Union remained bent on escalating the Cold War. More threatening, the Soviet tests revealed that it not only had a fusion weapon but could deliver it as a bomb; American cities, once protected behind the nation’s nuclear hegemony, were now at risk. The steadiness of Soviet intentions was hardly a surprise to Eisenhower or Dulles—neither was under any illusion about Soviet aspirations—but it forced a bracing debate within the administration: Should the United States act while it still held the preponderance of power? The Soviet advances made it clear that America’s advantage was diminishing, but to wage a preemptive nuclear war was a staggering option.
It was Eisenhower himself who posed the question many feared to raise. Addressing the NSC, he said that it looked to him “as though the hour of decision were at hand,” the keeper of the minutes recorded. “We should presently have to really face the question of whether or not we would have to throw everything at once against the enemy.” Eisenhower had long pondered this foreboding question—a scrap of notepaper jotted in July hinted at it: “Global war as a defense of freedom—almost contradiction in terms.” Today, Eisenhower’s message was dark and somber. He was raising “this terrible question” because ignorance and denial were no strategy at all. It was important to face the world as it was, “to determine our own course of action in the light of this capability.”
The NSC did not act that day, did not recommend the war of devastation that Ike posed for consideration, did not leap at the chance to destroy an enemy before it was too strong to fight back. But rarely in the years since Einstein’s haunting 1950 warning of the imminent threat of “general annihilation” had that threat ever beckoned quite so forcefully. Eisenhower faced it squarely and demanded that his aides do so as well. Having grasped the twin dangers of Communist advance and nuclear war, Eisenhower settled on a sophisticated strategy of containment, arms control, economic growth, covert action, and perseverance—always with annihilation at the door. The application of that strategy varied from flash point to flash point, but its core principles remained sturdy and largely unchanged. That September morning, Ike firmly asserted that the nation was charged “not only in saving our money or defending our persons from attack; we were engaged in the defense of a way of life, and the great danger was that in defending this way of life, we would find ourselves resorting to methods that endangered this way of life.” That was the paradox of the Cold War. Ike never shrank from it.
Faced with those grave and complex problems, Ike in the summer of 1953 convened an extraordinary group of advisers to give shape to his security policy. Known as Project Solarium because it was hatched in the White House’s Solarium Room, the group was divided into three advisory panels to assess Truman’s national security policy and to make recommendations for confronting the threat of Communism around the world. Three esteemed experts—the Sovietologist George Kennan, a leading architect of Truman’s containment policy, Vice Admiral Richard Conolly, and Major General James McCormack—were tapped to head panels consisting of ten members. Each of the groups was assigned to a different aspect of defense and diplomatic strategy. Once picked, the teams spent sixteen weeks honing recommendations in the basement of the National War College. Certain conclusions were consistent: all three groups viewed the Soviet Union as an obdurate enemy (though one worth negotiating with) and suggested a blend of conventional and nuclear weapons to deter Soviet aggression. Where they diverged was in assessing the immediacy of the threat and in proposing ways to check it. Task Force A argued for a continuation of Truman’s containment policy. Task Force B relied heavily on America’s nuclear deterrent. And Task Force C, whose records were sealed for decades, suggested a more aggressive course for rolling back Communist advances. “Time has been working against us,” Task Force C concluded. “The only way to end the cold war is to win it.”
The members of the panel proposed a relentless and multifaceted challenge to the Soviet Union and China. Nuclear weapons were to deter attack and to be put in the hands of field commanders so they could retaliate if attacked. Negotiations were desirable but chiefly to achieve strategic advantage. The United States would negotiate to diminish tensions and keep the Soviets in check. American nuclear weapons would deter the spread of Communism. Covert action would push it back. “A national program of deception and concealment” would cloak covert actions intended to roll back Communist influence. Allies were to be trusted, but only to a point: “They would undoubtedly oppose such an aggressive policy. Therefore, the full scope of the plan would be revealed to them only gradually as successes were won.” Adoption of Task Force C’s recommendations, the panel argued, represented not only a robust reply to Soviet Communism but the embarkment on “a true American Crusade.”
Ike received all three reports on July 16, 1953. He listened intently and then summarized the work with precision. Kennan, for one, was dazzled by Eisenhower’s synthesis of the information. Although frustrated that the groups could not agree on a single plan, Eisenhower forged ahead, asking the NSC to meld the key elements of each into a new security strategy. The result, known internally as NSC 162 and externally as Eisenhower’s New Look, refocused America’s Cold War efforts, recalibrating Truman’s hurried defense buildup and containment policy to deal with the long, persistent struggle that Eisenhower foresaw. It relied on three principles: the United States would not bankrupt itself to finance its military; America would save money without sacrifice to security by reducing military manpower and relying instead on the threat of nuclear weapons; and America would seek not only to contain Communism but to roll it back with the full panoply of tactical devices, from propaganda to covert action.
New Look had critics from the start. Chief among them were influential members of the military, who understood the implications of force reductions and who fought against New Look to the final hours of Ike’s presidency. But the new strategy achieved balance, an overriding Eisenhower imperative.
Critics aside, New Look was now American policy. Eisenhower was satisfied that he had located a middle way on national security. His new approach rejected undisciplined defense spending as well as dangerous defense cuts. It recognized that the Cold War could only be won over time. It was a struggle of attrition and of competitive advantage. It did not aim for victory in a traditional sense, but rather required patient managing of conflict. It meant that America could not, at least in the foreseeable future, live in a genuine state of peace. New Look thus expressed essential aspects of Ike’s leadership—compromise, patience, and conviction that time was on America’s side.
Having embraced a broad approach to rebuffing Communism, Eisenhower committed to lessening tensions where he could, part of a delicate calculus in which the Soviets were the enemy, to be checked by nuclear weapons, but also in which nuclear weapons were an enemy in their own right, their threat to be limited by negotiations with the Soviets. Peace and victory coexisted in that equation, though neither could be attained at the expense of the other. Instead, peace was to be maintained until victory could be achieved through covert action and nuclear deterrence. Executing New Look would require exquisite subtlety and control.
As he developed this extraordinary strategy, Eisenhower knew he needed the support of the American people, even though much of his program demanded secrecy and subversion. So he shared what he could, sought advantage against his enemy, and tried to find a way toward peace.