Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  Nasser’s weapons deal with the Soviet Union caught Washington by surprise. An even greater surprise arrived several days later as rumors spread that the Russians had offered to finance and build the massive Aswan High Dam on the Nile. The Aswan High Dam was an enormous engineering project—U.S. undersecretary of state Herbert Hoover, Jr., called it “the largest single project yet undertaken anywhere in the world”—designed to store and distribute the waters of the Nile for the irrigation of new farmland and provide electric power for industrialization. Feasibility studies undertaken by the World Bank in 1953 and 1954 indicated that the dam was both technologically feasible and within the economic capacity of Egypt to construct, assuming reasonable outside financing arrangements.10 Confronted with the Soviet offer, Nasser immediately informed Washington that Egypt would much prefer to deal with the United States and the World Bank rather than the Russians.

  With Eisenhower recuperating in Denver, Dulles took the lead in shaping the American response. Nasser’s desire for Western aid provided an opportunity to close the door on Soviet influence in Cairo, and Dulles quickly signed on. Meeting in Geneva, Dulles and British foreign secretary Harold Macmillan agreed to assist in the construction of the Aswan Dam in return for Egypt’s cooperation in arriving at an Arab-Israeli settlement.11 Quadripartite negotiations involving Great Britain, the United States, the World Bank, and Egypt commenced in Washington on November 21, 1955, and by that time Eisenhower was back in control. “Is there any reason not to go all out for the dam in Egypt?” he asked Dulles.12

  At the meeting of the National Security Council on December 1, the first one presided over by the president since his heart attack, Eisenhower jettisoned the agenda in order to discuss the Aswan Dam. The case for American support was presented by Dulles and Undersecretary Hoover. Treasury Secretary George Humphrey opposed. The United States was simply “building up a socialized economy in Egypt for all the world to look at.” Eisenhower rejected Humphrey’s advice. The only way the United States had been able to build the Hoover Dam, the president reminded him, had been “through the instrumentality of the Government and Government financing.” Dulles added that implicit in the plan was Egyptian cooperation in reaching an understanding with Israel. The minutes of the meeting noted specifically that the program had “the president’s approval.”13

  The Western financial package for the first phase of construction of the Aswan Dam was formalized on December 16, 1955. The World Bank would lend Egypt $200 million, the United States and Great Britain would provide cash grants of $56 million and $14 million, respectively, and would consider later grants of up to $200 million as the work progressed. Total cost of the dam was estimated at $1.3 billion, the balance of which would be handled by Egypt spread over fifteen to eighteen years.

  Eugene Black, president of the World Bank, carried the proposal to Cairo for Nasser’s approval. “Don’t act like a banker,” Dulles chided him.14 By mid-February, Black had reached substantial agreement with Nasser on most points, only to find that American support for the project was fast eroding. Continued skirmishing along the Israeli-Egyptian border made it evident that peace was unlikely to be achieved, and Zionist opposition to the dam had become manifest. As Sherman Adams put it, “Any attempt to give aid to the Arabs always met with opposition behind the scenes in Washington, where members of Congress were acutely aware of the … many well-organized pro-Israel lobbies that were always effective and influential in the Capitol.”15 In addition, Truman Democrats who would normally have supported the administration in foreign policy backed off because of Nasser’s arms deal with the Soviets, while cotton-state Democrats worried that newly irrigated farmland in the fertile Nile Valley would flood the market with long-staple cotton in competition with American growers.16 b

  As opposition grew, Dulles began to question the wisdom of the proposal. The British were backing off as well,c and Nasser was becoming increasingly influential as a leader of neutralist sentiment throughout the world—along with India’s Nehru and Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia. For Dulles, neutralism was heresy in the holy war against Communism. On May 16, 1956, when Nasser recognized mainland China, he moved beyond the pale. As one of Dulles’s biographers has written, in the secretary’s pantheon of devils, “the Red Chinese represented perhaps the highest and purest evil.”17 For Dulles and many at State, Defense, and in the intelligence community, Nasser was now in the enemy camp. The fact that both Great Britain and Israel had previously recognized the Communist regime in Beijing made no difference.

  Eisenhower was more tolerant. At his press conference the week after Nasser’s action, the president noted that he was disappointed, “but a single act on the part of another nation does not, in itself, destroy friendship for that nation.”

  “It’s just like your family,” Ike told the reporters. “Every difference or spat doesn’t mean you’re going to the divorce courts. In the same way here, you can’t take any one idea or any one act on the part of another government and say, ‘That’s the end; that’s that.’ ”18

  Two weeks later the president explicitly accepted neutralism as a viable policy for many countries. Speaking to the press on the twelfth anniversary of D-Day, Eisenhower said, “If you are waging peace, you can’t be too particular about the special attitudes that different countries take. We were a young country once, and our whole policy for the first 150 years was, we were neutral. We constantly asserted we were neutral in the wars of the world.” The United States, he said, should not assume that neutral nations do not deserve assistance. “We must not be parsimonious.… As long as we are not shooting, we are not spending one-tenth as much as we would if we were.”19

  The difference between Eisenhower and his secretary of state was evident. When the president’s press conference remarks came over the wire, Dulles rushed to the White House to urge Ike to issue a clarification. Eisenhower did so, but his four-paragraph clarification, a genuine fog of words, clarified only that he and Dulles were miles apart on neutralism and how to deal with it.20

  Two days later Eisenhower suffered a massive ileitis attack requiring major surgery that kept him out of action for the next five weeks. Shortly after midnight on June 8, 1956, Eisenhower suffered what appeared to be a digestive upset. These were not infrequent, and initially Dr. Snyder saw no cause for alarm. But when the pain did not subside, it was clear the president was far sicker than originally thought. Snyder called it “chronic ileitis.”21 At noon, Eisenhower was rushed to Walter Reed and by evening doctors concluded the president had an “obstruction of the intestine in the terminal ileum.”d He was operated on at 2 a.m. on June 9, and surgeons pronounced the procedure a success. Eisenhower’s life expectancy might even have been enhanced, the doctors said, because they corrected an intestinal condition that had existed for years.22

  The operation was conducted without incident. But recovery was far more difficult for Eisenhower than his recuperation from the heart attack nine months earlier. Four weeks later he was still wearing a surgical drainage tube and his mood was morose. Ann Whitman described the president as uncomfortable and depressed, unable to concentrate on the issues at hand. Nixon said Eisenhower “looked far worse than he had in 1955. The ileitis was not half as serious [as the heart attack], but he suffered more pain over a longer period of time.”23 The slowness of the president’s recovery was never revealed to the public, but for the next four weeks Eisenhower was effectively out of the loop. Meetings with staff members were minimal, and as one scholar has put it, “Foster Dulles was left to his own devices.”24

  Without Eisenhower’s restraining hand, Dulles moved discreetly to scuttle the financing for the Aswan Dam. On June 20, Nasser met with Eugene Black in Cairo and resolved all outstanding differences. Black returned to Washington and reported to Dulles on June 25. Everything was set, said Black, and Nasser still preferred to deal with the West rather than the Russians. Dulles was uninterested. When Black cautioned the secretary, “If you call it off I think all hell will break loo
se,” Dulles rose from his seat and walked out of the room, terminating the conversation.25

  At this point Dulles began to prepare the public for the cancellation of the Aswan project. On July 9, The New York Times, reflecting a leak from the top, reported that the State Department was “fundamentally re-examining United States relations with Egypt,” including the Aswan Dam.26 Henry Byroade, who was one of Nasser’s most consistent supporters in the State Department, was eased out as American ambassador in Cairo, and congressional leaders were quietly informed that the Aswan Dam was no longer a priority for the administration.

  Eisenhower was on the sidelines. Not until five days after Ike’s surgery did Dulles travel to Gettysburg for his first substantive conversation with the president. The meeting was short, with numerous items on the agenda, and the Aswan Dam was briefly alluded to at the conclusion. Dulles said simply that the State Department’s view of the merits of the matter “had somewhat altered” and let it go at that. Eisenhower did not respond. “For Eisenhower, this discussion of Aswan must have sounded like something happening on another planet,” said one biographer. “He had no up-to-date information and did not seek any.”27

  One week later the die was cast. Following a twenty-minute pro forma meeting of the National Security Council on July 19, the first chaired by Ike since his operation, Dulles told the president that relations with Nasser had worsened and that the State Department believed the American offer to support the Aswan Dam should be withdrawn. Eisenhower, who had not followed the developments, did not object. Dulles showed the president a draft statement he intended to release. Eisenhower read it cursorily and nodded his approval.28 Four hours later Dulles briskly informed Egypt’s ambassador in Washington that the United States no longer found the Aswan Dam economically feasible. It was canceling its offer of support.29 e One week later, on July 26, 1956, Nasser announced that Egypt was nationalizing the Suez Canal. “The fat was in the fire,” Eisenhower wrote later in his memoirs.30

  The cancellation of the Aswan Dam was the greatest diplomatic debacle of the Eisenhower era, and the West was totally unprepared to respond to Nasser’s action.f Britain and France feverishly organized military forces to retake the canal, and Dulles was away from Washington attending conferences in Latin America. Eisenhower, who was still recovering from his operation, was thrust back into command. It was a blessing in disguise. With the president back on the bridge, the American ship of state resumed its steady course. Ike refused to panic. What authority did Nasser have to seize the canal? he asked Herbert Brownell. “The entire length of the Canal lay within Egyptian territory,” the attorney general answered.31 It was a matter of eminent domain. From that point on, Eisenhower’s policy was clear. “Egypt was within its rights,” he told Dulles, “and until its operation of the Canal proves incompetent, there is nothing to do.”32 g

  Eisenhower immediately wrote Prime Minister Anthony Eden to emphasize “the unwisdom even of contemplating the use of military force at the moment.”33 When Britain and France persisted with plans to intervene, Dulles, the Joint Chiefs, and the congressional leadership, particularly Lyndon Johnson, argued that America’s allies deserved moral and economic support. Eisenhower rejected the argument. When Dulles suggested an international consortium to operate the canal, Eisenhower would have no part of it. “How would we like an international consortium running the Panama Canal?” asked the president.34 Admiral Arleigh Burke said the Joint Chiefs agreed that “Nasser must be broken.” Eisenhower disagreed. “Nasser embodies the emotional demands of the people of the area for independence and for ‘slapping the White Man down.’ ” Unless we were careful, said the president, Muslim solidarity could “array the world from Dakar to the Philippine Islands against us.”35

  Eisenhower was back to working seven days a week. He had temporarily averted war over Suez, the British and French stood down, and the Republican National Convention was due to convene at the Cow Palace in San Francisco on August 20, 1956. The Democrats, meeting in Chicago, had renominated Adlai Stevenson for president, and Estes Kefauver had secured the vice presidential nomination after a bruising floor fight with Senator John F. Kennedy. The Republican convention held no surprises. Eisenhower was renominated by acclamation on the first ballot, as was Nixon. A brief boomlet led by Harold Stassen to replace the vice president with Congressman Christian A. Herter of Massachusetts collapsed when Leonard Hall made it clear that such a move would disrupt party unity.36 In his acceptance speech, which critics believe was one of Eisenhower’s best, Ike did not mention Suez or the crisis in the Middle East. “The Republican Party is the Party of the Future,” said Ike, “because it is the party through which many of the things that still need doing will soonest be done.”37

  Eisenhower and Mamie at the farm in Gettysburg. (illustration credit 25.1)

  The autumn of 1956 was the lull before the storm. Eisenhower took a leaf from Grant’s book in 1872 and campaigned sparingly. (Grant did not campaign at all.) Except for intensified cross-border skirmishing, the Middle East remained calm, and Eden took pains to assure Ike that Great Britain preferred a negotiated settlement concerning Suez. In reality, Britain, France, and Israel were organizing to retake the canal by force. On October 24, 1956, at Sèvres, outside Paris, Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion signed a secret protocol with Britain and France putting the plan in motion. Israeli troops would invade the Sinai Peninsula on October 29 and advance toward the Suez Canal. Britain and France would issue an ultimatum to Israel and Egypt to cease hostilities and accept Anglo-French occupation of the Canal Zone. Egypt presumably would refuse, at which point Britain and France would launch their own invasion of Suez. With American voters going to the polls on November 6, planners in London, Paris, and Tel Aviv assumed the American government could not respond until after the seizure of the canal was a fait accompli.

  When the Israelis struck on October 29, Eisenhower was campaigning in Richmond, Virginia. Ike felt he had been betrayed by Eden and was furious. To compound the problem, American intelligence had failed to anticipate the Israeli attack. The president flew back to Washington and angrily ordered Dulles to fire off a message to Tel Aviv. “Foster, you tell them, Goddamnit, that we’re going to apply sanctions, we’re going to the United Nations, we’re going to do everything that there is so we can stop this thing.”38 At a hastily convened meeting in the Oval Office, Ike reminded those present that the 1950 Tripartite Declaration pledged the signatories to “support any victim of aggression in the Middle East.” When Dulles suggested that the British and French believed we had to support them, Ike hit the ceiling. “What would they think if we were to go in to aid Egypt to fulfill our pledge?” he asked angrily. “Nothing justifies double-crossing us. I don’t care whether I’m re-elected or not. We must make good on our word, otherwise we are a nation without honor.”39

  A good night’s sleep did nothing to improve Ike’s temper. “The French and British do not have adequate cause for war,” he told Dulles and Sherman Adams the next morning. “Egyptian action in nationalizing the Canal is not enough to justify this.”40 At Eisenhower’s direction, Henry Cabot Lodge introduced a motion in the UN Security Council calling for an immediate cease-fire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces. When the vote was taken that afternoon, Britain and France cast vetoes—their first in the history of the United Nations. A follow-on Soviet motion to the same effect was also vetoed. The British and French vetoes upset Ike. Later that afternoon, when Defense Mobilization Director Arthur Flemming warned Eisenhower that the Israeli attack imperiled Western Europe’s oil supply, the president barked back that “those who began this operation should be left to work out their own oil problems—to boil in their own oil.” The United States would not provide assistance.41 Lodge was instructed to appeal the cease-fire resolution to the UN General Assembly—a procedure that had not been used since the beginning of the Korean War in 1950—and Treasury Secretary George Humphrey was told to look at the financial implications of the invasion for Brit
ain and France. “This cost of war was not irrelevant,” said Eisenhower.42

  On October 30, as planned, Britain and France issued ultimatums to Egypt and Israel to stop fighting, withdraw from the canal, and permit Anglo-French occupation of the Canal Zone to ensure canal traffic would not be interrupted. If they did not, Britain and France would take the canal by force. Dulles told Eisenhower the ultimatums were “about as crude and brutal as anything he had ever seen.”43 The Israelis announced their readiness to comply, the Egyptians ignored the ultimatums, and twelve hours later Britain and French planes commenced attacks on targets in Cairo, Port Said, and Alexandria. The New York Times reported sightings of “the largest naval concentration seen in the eastern Mediterranean since World War II.”44 Nasser responded by sinking a 320-foot freighter loaded with cement at the narrowest point of the canal, effectively blocking transit.45

  On November 1, Admiral Burke ordered the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean to stay near the Egyptian coast and be ready for any contingency.

  “Who’s the enemy?” asked Vice Admiral Charles R. (“Cat”) Brown, commanding.

  “I don’t know,” Burke replied. “We are still having that discussion.”46

  Later that afternoon, at Eisenhower’s direction, Dulles presented the United States’ cease-fire resolution to the UN General Assembly. Dulles also issued a sharply worded statement pertaining to sanctions against Israel if the fighting continued. At the same time, Eisenhower moved quietly to tighten the screws on Britain and France. “You are not going to get a cease-fire by saying everybody please stop,” he told Dulles.47 The administration pigeonholed plans to supply Western Europe with oil in the event supplies from the Middle East were cut off, and the Treasury Department moved to reduce British access to dollar accounts in the United States.48 The pound sterling was already under siege on world markets, and Eisenhower wanted nothing done to ease the pressure. Also on November 1, Syrian Army engineers destroyed three pumping stations of the pipeline carrying Iraqi oil to the Mediterranean. Those pipelines had a capacity of five hundred thousand barrels a day. With the pipelines shut down, the Suez Canal blocked, and the United States not shipping any oil, Europe’s supply of petroleum was dwindling rapidly.