Chapter 28: EISENHOWER REPUBLICANISM:

Chapter 28 Objectives

o We will be studying

Eisenhower’s Republican

Domestic policies.

o We will be studying the growing

escalation of the cold war

during the Eisenhower

administration.

Ecc_3:8 A time to love, and a

time to hate; a time of war, and a

time of peace.

EISNEHOWER REPUBLICANISM:

o Dwight D. Eisenhower was one of the last experienced politicians to serve in the White House in the twentieth century.

o He was also among the most popular and politically successful presidents of the postwar era.

o At home, he pursued essentially moderate policies, avoiding new initiatives but accepting the work of earlier reformers.

o Abroad he continued and even intensified American commitments to oppose communism.

EISNEHOWER REPUBLICANISM:

o Eisenhower’s sought to limit federal activates and encourage private enterprise.

o He supported the private rather than public development of natural resources.

o To the chagrin of farmers, he lowered federal support for farm prices.

o He also removed the last limited wage and price controls maintained by the Truman administration.

EISNEHOWER REPUBLICANISM:

o Eisenhower opposed the creation of

new social service programs such as

national health insurance.

o He strove constantly to reduce

federal expenditures and balance

the budget.

The Survival of the Welfare State:

o The President took few new initiatives in domestic policy, but resisted pressure from the right wing of his party to dismantle welfare policies of the New Deal that had survived.

o He agreed to extend the social security system to an additional 10 million people and unemployment compensation to an additional 4 million, and he agreed to increase the legal minimum hourly wage from 75 cents to $1.

The Survival of the Welfare State:

o Perhaps the most significant legislative accomplishment of the Eisenhower administration was the Federal High Way Act of 1956, which authorized $25 billion for a ten year project that built over 40,000 miles of interstate highways the largest public works project in American history.

o The program was to be funded through the highway trust fund whose revenues would come from new taxes on the purchases of fuel, automobiles, trucks, and tires.

The Decline of McCarthyism:

o The Eisenhower administration did

little in its first years in office to

discourage the anticommunist furor

that had gripped the nation.

o By 1954, the crusade against

subversion was beginning to

produce considerable popular

opposition.

The Decline of McCarthyism:

o In January 1954, McCarthy

overreached himself when he attacked

Secretary of Army Robert Stevens and

the entire armed forces.

o Public hearings that were nationally

televised were held and McCarthy after

bullying witnesses and hurling

groundless and cruel accusations, was

seen as a villain and even buffoon.

The Decline of McCarthyism:

o The Senate in 1954 voted to censure

McCarthy’s conduct unbecoming of a

senator.

o Three years later he died of apparent

alcoholism.

EISENHOWER, DULLES, AND THE COLD WAR:

o John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower’s Secretary of State who had a stern moral revulsion to communism entered office denouncing Truman’s containment policies as excessively passive.

o Arguing that the U.S. should pursue an active program of liberation which would lead to a roll back of Communist expansion.

EISENHOWER, DULLES, AND THE COLD WAR:

o But once in office Dulles had to defer to more moderate views of the President.

o The most prominent of Dulles’s innovations was the policy of Massive Retaliation which Dulles announced in 1954.

o The United States would respond to Communist threats to its allies not by using conventional forces in local conflicts (a policy that had led to so much frustration in Korea), but by relying on the deterrent of massive retaliatory power.

o By which he meant nuclear weapons.

EISENHOWER, DULLES, AND THE COLD WAR:

o This was called brinksmanship,

pushing the Soviet Union to the

brink of war to exact concessions.

o The real force was economics as

well.

o With the call to reduce American

military expenditures, an increasing

reliance on atomic weapons seemed

to promise more bang for the buck.

FRANCE, AMERICA, and VIETNAM:

o On January 27, 1953, negotiators at Panmunjom finally signed an agreement ending the hostilities of the Korean War.

o Each antagonist was to withdraw its troops a mile and a half from the existing battle line which ran roughly along the 38th parallel, the prewar border between North and South Korea.

FRANCE, AMERICA, and VIETNAM:

o A conference in Geneva was to consider

means by which to reunite the nation

peacefully although in fact the 1954

meeting produced no agreement and left

the cease-fire line as the apparent

permanent border between the two

countries.

FRANCE, AMERICA, and VIETNAM:

o Almost simultaneously the United States was being drawn into a large bitter struggle in Southeast Asia.

o Vietnam, a colony of France was facing strong opposition from nationalists, led by Ho Chi Minh a Communist.

o When France was in verge of losing their military effort in the region, Eisenhower refused to provide direct military intervention in Vietnam.

Cold War Crisis:

o American foreign policy in the 1950s rested on a reasonably consistent foundation: the containment policy; as revised by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.

o The Middle East became a vital region with American oil companies investing heavily in the oil rich region.

o Also the U.S. recognized the new Jewish homeland, Israel that led to conflicts with the fledgling nation’s neighbors who saw the formation of the nation unjustly displacing Palestinians who considered it their own country.

Cold War Crisis:

o In Iran, Muhammad Mossadegh the nationalist prime minister of Iran began to resist the presence of western corporations.

o In 1953 the CIA along with conservative Iranian military leaders engineered a coup that drove Mossadegh from office.

o To replace him, the CIA helped elevate the young shah of Iran.

o Muhammad Reza Pahlevi from his position as token constitutional monarch to that of virtually absolute ruler.

Cold War Crisis:

o In 1954, the Eisenhower administration

ordered the CIA to help topple the new

leftist government of Jacob Arbenz

Guzman in Guatemala.

o A regime that Dulles responding to the

entreaties of the United Fruit Company, a

major investor in Guatemala fearful of

Arbenz, argued was potentially Communist.

Cold War Crisis:

o No nation in the region had been more closely tied to America than Cuba.

o Its leader, Fulgencio Batista ruled as a military dictator since 1952 when with American assistance he toppled a more moderate government.

o Cuba’s relatively prosperous economy had become virtual fiefdom of American corporations, which controlled almost all the island’s natural resources and had cornered over half the vital sugar crop.

Cold War Crisis:

o In 1957, a popular movement of

resistance to the Batista regime

began to gather strength under the

leadership of Fidel Castro.

o On January 1, 1959, with Batista

having fled to exile in Spain, Castro

marched into Havana and

established a new government.

Cold War Crisis:

o Castro soon began implementing

radical policies of land reform and

expropriating foreign-owned

businesses and resources.

o Cuba-American relations

deteriorated rapidly as a result.

Cold War Crisis:

o When Cuba began accepting assistance from the Soviet Union in 1960, the United States cut back the quota by which Cuba could export sugar to America at a favored price.

o In 1961, Eisenhower severed diplomatic ties with Cuba.

o Castro subsequently made an alliance with the Soviet Union.

Cold War Crisis:

o In 1956, relations between the Soviet Union and the West soured further in 1956 in response to the Hungarian Revolution.

o Hungarian dissidents had launched a popular uprising in November to demand democratic reforms.

o Before the month was out, Soviet tanks and troops entered Budapest to crush the uprising and to restore a pro-Soviet régime.

o Eisenhower refused to intervene.

U-2 CRISIS:

o In November 1958 Nikita Khrushchev came to power in the Soviet Union and suggested that he and Eisenhower personally discuss the issue of abandoning West Berlin by visiting each other’s countries and at a summit meeting in Paris in 1960.

o The U.S. agreed.

o Khrushchev's 1959’s visit to America produced a cool but mostly polite public response.

U-2 CRISIS:

o Plans proceeded for summit and

Eisenhower's visit to Moscow when the

Soviets announced that they shot

down an American U-2 spy plane and

captured its pilot.

o This led to Khrushchev to withdraw his

invitation to Eisenhower to visit

Moscow.

U-2 CRISIS:

o Tensions increased.

o Yet Eisenhower showed restraint on not intervening in Vietnam and Hungary by sending troops.

o In his farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower warned against the dangers of a vast military-industrial complex.

o He stood at marked contrast to the attitude of his successors.