Eisenhower in War and Peace

by Jean Edward Smith

  At his news conference the following day Eisenhower undertook a staunch defense of Adams. “Anyone who knows Sherman Adams has never had any doubt of his personal integrity and honesty,” said the president. Perhaps mindful of the largess he had often received from his friends in the Gang, Ike told the newsmen that “a gift is not a bribe. One is evil, the other is a tangible expression of friendship.” Eisenhower acknowledged that Adams might have acted imprudently, but “I believe with my whole heart that he is an invaluable public servant doing a difficult job efficiently, honestly, and tirelessly.”17

  On August 13, 1958, the House of Representatives cited Goldfine for contempt of Congress because of his refusal to answer some twenty-two questions during his testimony. Democrats were prepared to give Adams a pass, but congressional Republicans clamored for his scalp. It was an election year, and the GOP campaign committees viewed Adams as an anchor who would pull down Republican candidates nationwide. The appearance of influence peddling, valid or not, was an unnecessary burden in what was shaping up as a vintage year for the Democrats.

  Eisenhower initially stood by Adams. “Completely convinced of his innocence, I refused to ask for his resignation.”18 As the White House hunkered down, the calls for Adams’s resignation on Capitol Hill mounted daily. Nixon reported that the vast majority of Republicans in the House and Senate thought Adams should go. Meade Alcorn, the RNC chairman, repeated the message, as did Winthrop Aldrich, a friend of Adams whom Ike consulted.

  The state of Maine always holds its statewide and congressional elections in September, six weeks or so before the rest of the nation goes to the polls. When the results in Maine were tabulated in 1958, the Republicans lost in a landslide—which many attributed to the negative publicity pertaining to Adams’s relations with Goldfine. At that point Eisenhower realized that whether justified or not, Adams had become too much of a liability to retain. “How dreadful it is that cheap politicians can so pillory an honorable man,” the president told Ann Whitman.19 On September 17, Eisenhower asked for Adams’s resignation. The chief of staff stepped down the following week, but it was too late to reverse the headwind blowing against the Republicans.20 In the November elections, the Democrats picked up fifty seats in the House and fifteen in the Senate. Adams was replaced as White House chief of staff by his deputy, retired major general Wilton B. “Jerry” Persons, an old friend of Ike’s. At Treasury, Humphrey was succeeded by Robert B. Anderson; Neil H. McElroy replaced Wilson at Defense; William P. Rogers, Nixon’s old friend and associate, took Brownell’s place as attorney general; and former congressman Christian A. Herter of Massachusetts became secretary of state. Persons, Anderson, McElroy, Rogers, and Herter were competent executives, but scarcely of the caliber of the cabinet officers they replaced.

  In the summer of 1958, Eisenhower’s attention was drawn once more to the Middle East. In the aftermath of the Suez affair, Eisenhower had asked Congress for blanket authorization to use military force to preserve the independence of the countries of the region if requested to do so. As with the Formosa Resolution, which Congress had adopted in 1955, the administration’s proposal left the final decision to the president and was deliberately vague as to the circumstances that might trigger it. Known subsequently as the Eisenhower Doctrine, the proposal was approved in March 1957.21 “The existing vacuum in the Middle East must be filled by the United States before it is filled by Russia,” Eisenhower told members of Congress.22

  The Eisenhower Doctrine was framed in the Cold War context and had little immediate application. Like the Formosa Resolution, it was hortatory, designed to dissuade the Soviets rather than a call to action. Nevertheless it was a blank check, and in the summer of 1958 Eisenhower chose to cash it—not in relation to the Soviets, nor to combat Communist expansion, but to maintain stability in Lebanon.

  Lebanon was nominally an Arab country and a member of the Arab League, although a slim majority of its people were Maronite Catholic. The president and the Army commander were traditionally Christian, while the prime minister and speaker of the legislature were Muslim.23 This uneasy equilibrium was threatened in the aftermath of the Suez War by the influx of thousands of Arab refugees from Palestine. There was brief street fighting in the spring of 1958, although order was quickly restored. But on July 14, 1958, the situation changed dramatically following the violent overthrow of the British-installed monarchy in Iraq by radical Iraqi nationalists. The royal houses of Jordan and Saudi Arabia were threatened, and in Lebanon, President Camille Chamoun immediately asked Eisenhower for American troops to maintain order. The fear was revolutionary Arab nationalism, a decidedly secular movement sponsored by Egypt and Syria, not to be confused with Muslim religious fundamentalism. Eisenhower responded on July 15 with the dispatch of three battalions of Marines from the Sixth Fleet, followed by two airborne battle groups from Germany, a total of some fourteen thousand men. “You are doing a Suez on me,” joked British prime minister Harold Macmillan, who sent a battalion of paratroopers to Amman to bolster the regime of King Hussein.24

  The Marines landed without incident; there was no fighting of any kind and no casualties. The troops were withdrawn four months later. The intervention in Lebanon was the only time during Eisenhower’s eight years in the White House that American troops were dispatched to a foreign country, and as in Little Rock, Ike chose to use overwhelming force. The reason for doing so, which Eisenhower never doubted, was to ensure the stability of regimes in the Middle East favorable to the United States, and to demonstrate Washington’s ability to deploy troops in the area on a moment’s notice. The whole affair, Eisenhower noted in his memoirs, brought about “a definite change in Nasser’s attitude toward the United States.”25

  No sooner had the crisis in Lebanon eased, than the uneasy standoff in the Formosa Strait fell apart. Against Washington’s advice, Chiang Kai-shek had recently deployed more than one hundred thousand troops—over a third of his army—on the islands of Quemoy and Matsu. Beijing considered the move provocative and demanded the troops be withdrawn. When Chiang refused, the Chinese commenced a sustained shelling of the islands. Eisenhower was momentarily caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, there was no possibility that Chiang’s forces could mount an invasion of the mainland, and his increase in the size of the garrisons had been unquestionably provocative. On the other, Chiang was America’s ally and the United States was committed to the defense of Formosa and the offshore islands as well in certain circumstances. What Eisenhower worried about was that Chiang might escalate the crisis to draw the United States into a war with mainland China. “The Orientals can be very devious,” he told Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Quarles. “If we give Chiang our full support he would then call the tune.”26

  Eisenhower dispatched two additional carriers to the region and ordered the Seventh Fleet to convoy Chiang’s supply ships on the high seas, but not within the three-mile coastal limit. The mainland Chinese responded by holding their fire until the Nationalist vessels came close to shore. As resupply problems for Quemoy and Matsu mounted, Dulles and the Joint Chiefs suggested that the commander of the Seventh Fleet be authorized to use tactical atomic weapons against the Chinese without reference to Washington. Eisenhower refused. An attack on the mainland “could be ordered only with my approval,”27 said the president. The crisis simmered into early September. On September 4, 1958, Dulles issued a statement reaffirming the intention of the United States to protect the offshore islands, but including a thinly veiled offer to negotiate, which Eisenhower insisted upon.28 Two days later, Chou En-lai responded positively. Shortly thereafter U.S. and Chinese diplomats resumed discussions over the conference table in Warsaw, discussions that had broken off the year before. The Joint Chiefs also revised their position. On September 11, Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy told Eisenhower that the chiefs had concluded that the offshore islands were not necessary for the defense of Formosa and should be vacated. That evening Eisenhower went on national television to address the crisis. “
There is not going to be any appeasement,” said Ike, but “I believe there is not going to be any war.”29 Both sides got the message. Chiang accepted in principle the need to reduce the garrisons on the offshore islands, and the Chinese announced that they would fire on the Nationalist convoys only on the odd days of the month, permitting resupply on the even days. “I wondered if we were in a Gilbert and Sullivan war,” Eisenhower later noted in his memoirs.30 The crisis passed. Quemoy and Matsu remained in Nationalist hands, the size of the garrisons was reduced, though not nearly so much as Eisenhower wished, and the firing ceased. Ike had remained cool throughout the crisis and once again war was avoided.

  The most serious foreign policy issue Eisenhower confronted in 1958 concerned Berlin. The city of Berlin, still technically under four-power occupation from World War II, was located 110 miles within what had been the Soviet zone of occupation, now the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The three western sectors of the city (British, French, and American) were consolidated and governed as “West Berlin”; the Soviet sector—“East Berlin”—was integrated into the GDR. Simply put, West Berlin was part of the democratic West and NATO; East Berlin was part of the Communist East and the Warsaw Pact. This uneasy situation had prevailed for over a decade. West Berlin was linked to West Germany by three air corridors, three autobahns, and three rail lines. The Russians had attempted to block access in 1948 during the Berlin blockade, but the Allied airlift had kept West Berlin supplied, and the Russians eventually backed down. A tacit understanding pertaining to access gradually evolved and was no longer at issue. What was at issue in 1958 was the precarious state of the German Democratic Republic and the desperate Soviet need to ensure its survival.

  The military boundary between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was for all practical purposes the boundary between the two Germanies. It was heavily fortified and impenetrable. Churchill called it an “iron curtain.” No commerce passed through; there was no civilian traffic or access of any kind—save for the corridors to West Berlin. The situation in Berlin was entirely different. Although divided between East and West for governmental purposes, and possessing different currencies, movement within the city was unimpeded. There were no border controls between East Berlin and West Berlin, streets ran through, as did the U-Bahn, the S-Bahn, and city buses. One could travel freely anywhere in the city. West Berlin was cordoned off from East Germany, but not from East Berlin. And East Berlin opened into East Germany. There were no border controls since East Berlin was the capital of the GDR.

  That was at the root of the problem in 1958. Disaffected East Germans could travel freely to East Berlin, and then simply cross over to West Berlin, ask for political asylum, and be flown out and resettled in West Germany. What had begun as a trickle of refugees in the early postwar years had reached mammoth proportions by 1958. The population of the former Soviet zone (now the GDR), which numbered close to twenty million in 1945, had shrunk to seventeen million by 1958, and those who were leaving often represented the most productive elements of East German society.31 This extraordinary emigration of professionals and skilled workers was more than the Communist regime of East Germany could endure.

  The most obvious way to halt the population drain was to plug the escape route in Berlin. At the end of October 1958, Walter Ulbricht, the head of the East German government, commenced the effort by charging that the continued presence of Allied forces in Berlin was illegal. According to Ulbricht—and with patent disregard for the relevant quadripartite agreements—all of Berlin belonged to the GDR.32 One month later the theme was picked up by Nikita Khrushchev. In separate notes to the United States, Britain, and France, Khrushchev demanded that the Allied occupation of Berlin be terminated and that West Berlin be converted into a demilitarized “free city.” Khrushchev gave the Western powers a six-month ultimatum. If the Allies had not accepted his proposal within that time, the Soviet Union would conclude its own agreement with the GDR and end the occupation unilaterally.33

  Khrushchev’s ultimatum hit the West like a bombshell. In West Berlin, Mayor Willy Brandt pointed out that Berlin was only part of the larger struggle between East and West and that there was “no isolated solution.”34 Eisenhower, who was taking time off for a much needed rest at the Augusta National, issued a terse statement dismissing the Soviet note out of hand.a At Ike’s direction, General Henry I. Hodes, the commander of American forces in Europe (USAREUR), paid a highly publicized visit to Berlin to demonstrate U.S. resolve, and German chancellor Konrad Adenauer made one of his rare trips to the city. West Berlin elections were scheduled for the following week, and in an unusual display of unity Brandt and Adenauer campaigned together. “The clouds have darkened over this city,” said Adenauer, “but we shall not be frightened.”35 Brandt was reelected handily, and the Communists’ high hopes were dashed when they received just 31,500 votes out of the 1.7 million votes cast.

  Buoyed by the West Berlin election results, the Western powers girded to hold their ground. Dulles, joined by his British and French counterparts, issued a formal statement announcing the intention of their governments to remain in Berlin, the NATO Council stated it would not yield to threats, and in Washington the government issued a lengthy document spelling out the legal status of Berlin.36 At the end of the year the United States, Britain, and France delivered their official replies to the Soviet demand. In identical notes the three governments told Moscow that they had no intention of relinquishing their rights in Berlin, and that they continued to hold the Soviet Union responsible under the relevant wartime agreements. The Russian proposal to convert West Berlin into a “free city” was unacceptable. Eisenhower, ably supported by Macmillan and de Gaulle, was determined to hold firm. Ike also recognized the need to give Khrushchev a way to back down gracefully. At his suggestion, the Allied replies noted that Berlin was simply a part of the larger question of Germany, and offered to commence negotiations on that subject. Those negotiations, of course, could not take place under threat of an ultimatum.37 It was Eisenhower at his best: a carrot and a stick.

  Khrushchev got the message. On a whirlwind unofficial visit to the United States, Soviet deputy premier Anastas Mikoyan said his government’s six-month ultimatum related only to the beginning of discussions, not to a settlement of the dispute. Khrushchev told the East Germans much the same. Speaking to the Ninth All-German Workers Conference in Leipzig on March 7, Khrushchev told the East Germans not to hurry. “The wind does not blow in your face. The conditions are not ripe as yet for a new scheme of things. Each fruit has its season.”38

  On May 27, 1959, Khrushchev’s ultimatum came and went. Nothing happened. In Berlin it was business as usual.b Thanks to Eisenhower’s determination the crisis eased. Two years later, as East Germany continued to hemorrhage, Khrushchev took the measure of another American president and decided to risk it. After meeting John F. Kennedy in Vienna in June 1961, Khrushchev flashed Ulbricht the signal to go ahead. On August 13, 1961, the East Germans closed the border between East and West Berlin and began construction of the Berlin Wall—action they had declined to take with Ike in the White House. Kennedy affirmed America’s commitment to West Berlin; Eisenhower defended the quadripartive status of the entire city.

  In the early summer of 1959, Khrushchev let it be known that he would like to visit the United States. Eisenhower thought it would be a good idea. “This will take the crisis edge off the Berlin situation,” Ike wrote Harold Macmillan.39 After a brief exchange of notes it was agreed that Khrushchev would come to the United States in mid-September, with Eisenhower paying a return visit to the Soviet Union the following year. Before receiving Khrushchev, Eisenhower thought it best to visit Europe and touch base with Macmillan, Adenauer, and de Gaulle—all of whom were understandably nervous about a one-on-one meeting between the American and Soviet leaders.

  Ike’s meeting with de Gaulle was memorable. Recalled in 1958 from the political wilderness to handle the crisis in Algeria, de Gaulle had been the last premier of the Fourth Republ
ic, the author of the constitution of the Fifth Republic, the first president of France under the new regime, and the exemplar of national reconciliation, bridging the historic divide between Left and Right. In 1959, de Gaulle was at the height of his power. “I at once sensed important changes since I had last seen him,” said Eisenhower. “He now appeared a more benign, less forbidding individual than the fiery division commander who had made himself the symbol of French resistance in World War II.”40

  De Gaulle for his part was effusive in welcoming Eisenhower to France. “Whatever may come in the future, whatever may happen in the years ahead, you will for us forever be the generalissimo of the armies of freedom.”41 On the second evening, after the formal program concluded at the Château de Rambouillet, the summer residence of the presidents of France, the two heads of state, who were spending the night at Rambouillet, sat before the fireplace in Ike’s apartment in their bathrobes and began to reminisce. “Isn’t it curious,” observed de Gaulle, “that we are two old generals who have written our memoirs and we have never carped or recriminated at the other. Roosevelt thought that I took myself for Joan of Arc. He was wrong. I simply took myself for General de Gaulle.”42

  The discussion that evening was wide-ranging, covering the major issues confronting the West, including France’s effort to develop its own nuclear weapons program—which de Gaulle put in perspective. “You, Eisenhower, would go to nuclear war for Europe because you know what is at stake. But as the Soviet Union develops the capability to strike the cities of North America, one of your successors [may not]. When that comes, I or my successor must have in hand the nuclear means to turn what the Soviets may want to be a conventional war into a nuclear war.”43 It was precisely that perception of Eisenhower—that he would not flinch from launching a nuclear war if necessary to protect the West—that made the United States so formidable.