In 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower became the first Republican
president in 20 years. A war hero rather than a career
politician, he had a natural, common touch that made him widely
popular. "I like Ike" was the campaign slogan of the time. After
serving as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Western Europe
during World War II, Eisenhower had been army chief of staff,
president of Columbia University, and military head of NATO
before seeking the Republican presidential nomination. Skillful
at getting people to work together, he functioned as a strong
public spokesman and an executive manager somewhat removed from
detailed policy making.
Despite disagreements on detail, he shared Truman's basic view
of American foreign policy. He, too, perceived Communism as a
monolithic force struggling for world supremacy. In his first
inaugural address, he declared, "Forces of good and evil are
massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history.
Freedom is pitted against slavery, lightness against dark."
The new president and his secretary of state, John Foster
Dulles, had argued that containment did not go far enough to
stop Soviet expansion. Rather, a more aggressive policy of
liberation was necessary, to free those subjugated by Communism.
But when a democratic rebellion broke out in Hungary in 1956,
the United States stood back as Soviet forces suppressed it.
Eisenhower's basic commitment to contain Communism remained, and
to that end he increased American reliance on a nuclear shield.
The United States had created the first atomic bombs. In 1950
Truman had authorized the development of a new and more powerful
hydrogen bomb. Eisenhower, fearful that defense spending was out
of control, reversed Truman's NSC-68 policy of a large
conventional military buildup.
Relying on what Dulles called "massive retaliation," the
administration signaled it would use nuclear weapons if the
nation or its vital interests were attacked.
In practice, however, the nuclear option could be used only
against extremely critical attacks. Real Communist threats were
generally peripheral. Eisenhower rejected the use of nuclear
weapons in Indochina, when the French were ousted by Vietnamese
Communist forces in 1954. In 1956, British and French forces
attacked Egypt following Egyptian nationalization of the Suez
Canal and Israel invaded the Egyptian Sinai. The president
exerted heavy pressure on all three countries to withdraw.
Still, the nuclear threat may have been taken seriously by
Communist China, which refrained not only from attacking Taiwan,
but from occupying small islands held by Nationalist Chinese
just off the mainland. It may also have deterred Soviet
occupation of Berlin, which reemerged as a festering problem
during Eisenhower's last two years in office.
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