After he returned home, Eisenhower began jotting notes
for his report to the nation. He was still
struggling to manage public emotion by striking just the right balance of
confidence and fear. His notes urged
“caution,” yet affirmed, “We must be hopeful.”
Lest there be too much hope, he warned that the summit had not
“eliminated problems of world shaking importance.” Worried that he might have overdone the
caution, he added: “But we must not be
discouraged merely because our…” Then he
broke off and scratched out those last few words. Editing a draft, he softened claims of great
success at
The speech in its final form reflected the same
uncertainty, as it straddled the ill-defined line between hope and caution,
between new-found peace and continuing cold war. In a public statement the same day, Eisenhower
warned that “the apparently sincere desire” of the Soviets to work out
differences “does not, of itself, warrant any relaxation of the mutual security
measures we and our allies of the free world are now pursuing.”[2] No doubt he was wary of right-wing charges of
appeasement. But he was also continuing
his rhetorical campaign to energize the nation for further cold war by keeping
it balanced between excessive and insufficient fear, between hope for peace and
persistence in conflict. Skillful cold
war now required a rare promise of
The
Virtually all sources acknowledged that the summit had
produced only one tangible result: a
commitment to keep on talking. James
Reston assured his readers that Eisenhower had aimed only “to revive the
process of negotiation.” But there was
little analysis of specific negotiable issues.
Instead, the media treated negotiations as a symbol of a vaguely defined
“live-and-let-live arrangement,” as Newsweek
put it. The Washington Post expressed a common view that the West had agreed to
“a sort of co-existence by stages.”
There was now, a Scripps-Howard editorial explained, “an unwritten
agreement to wage the cold war with politeness instead of insults.” The
promise of more conferences was generally construed as a promise to continue
the cold war truce and the cold war balance.[4]
In these reports, images of a cold war truce, an
endless round of negotiations, and a secure balance of power were used so
interchangeably that they became virtually synonymous. The prospect of a balance of power secured by
negotiations was enough to spark eschatological hopes for world peace: “victory over skepticism…may well go down in
history”; “could make all the difference between a darkened, fearful world and
one that will know what President Eisenhower has described as ‘a new dawn’”;
“The world has but to stretch forth its hand to have peace and prosperity such
as we have not dared to dream.” Under
the shadow of the bomb, a negotiated truce preserving a balance of power could
easily point to, or indeed become, the eschatological horizon.[5]
There was little doubt, in the
Of course Soviet conciliation could be read in more
sinister ways. Newsweek quoted a memo from Eisenhower to Congressional leaders
warning that the Soviets were merely hoping to make time work for them by
accepting the status quo. Hightower
agreed that “one of the Russian purposes in coming here was to promote a freeze
of the present division of
Most sources agreed with columnist William Stoneman
that “Open Skies” was “bound to be taken primarily as a propaganda ploy,”
because it so obviously gave an advantage to the U.S.[8] But many sources agreed with the San Francisco Chronicle: “The fact that the Soviets cannot easily be
imagined as accepting does not rob the gesture of its point, however. The world heard.” It “took from the Russians the ‘peace’
initiative they have so long held,” the Atlanta
Constitution explained. For Newsweek, the fact that “the Soviets
made no reply to Eisenhower's proposals” proved that the president had “shown
up the Russians.” The onus was now
wholly on
Within the cold war framework, though, the new talk of
peace was not just a psywar victory but also a source of anxiety. Newsweek
worried about excessive optimism at home and abroad: “The American people may be so persuaded
Utopia is here that pressures will mount to cut military spending and the
draft, and bring soldiers home from overseas.…[NATO] faces its toughest fight
yet: How to stop the tidal wave of
optimism from the shores of Lake Geneva..…Is NATO Falling Apart?” James Reston cautioned that the Soviets were
waiting for the time that western Europe, tired of cold war, would be tempted
by “blandishments from the East.…Meanwhile they smile and smile, negotiate and
negotiate, divide and divide.”[10]
Cold war dualism also created the framework for the
one message that dominated
But what was the president's great achievement? Was it
moving the world closer to peace by relaxing cold war tensions, or putting the
Soviets on the defensive and moving the “free world” a step closer to cold war
victory? There was no way to know for
sure. The world seemed to be on the
brink of peace, while it still remained on the brink of war. The image of the foes talking about peace
pointed toward the possibility of a perfect static balance. But it also suggested the possibility of
flexibility and change. Two routes into
the future loomed ahead, yet both were in doubt. So the future was less predictable—which
meant, in the discourse of apocalypse management, more dangerous—than ever.
The pervasive blending of hope and danger made
ambiguity the hallmark of all the reporting on
Yet the press masked the paradox by embracing the
contrasting implications and denying any contradictions. The peace it celebrated was the enduring
static balance that would signal cold war victory. With both peace and victory hinging on the
same precarious superpower relationship, it was harder than ever to distinguish
peace from war. Both were assumed to be
processes of gradually enhancing stability and security. This fusion was easy to achieve because
apocalypse management was assumed as both the means to and the substance of the
ultimate cold war goal.
The discursive
framework of apocalypse management enabled the
All this was very much what Eisenhower said in his own
public pronouncements. The press
reporting was, on the whole, just the way he wanted it. C.D. Jackson expressed it best at the time,
in a secret memo aptly titled, “The U.S. Public -- A Matter of
Orchestration”: “The American people
have in fact been extraordinarily docile and cooperative. They have rolled or oscillated with a
tremendous number of changing moods -- hard line, soft line, scowls, smiles,
tough words, peaceful words, and now the ‘spirit of Geneva.’” The
There was continuing public debate, sometimes bitter,
about particular policies. But critics of
the administration generally accepted its basic premises. They agreed that the three great apocalyptic
threats had to be managed over the "long haul." And they agreed that this management was now
the meaning of peace as well as war.
They simply disagreed on the best means.
Most critics accepted the nuclear buildup but wanted more conventional
weapons as well, to prepare for "brushfire" wars. They saw these wars as ways to contain
communism yet prevent a general apocalyptic war. In that sense they, like Eisenhower, were
willing to use the military for apocalypse management; they simply wanted to
prepare to use it more often and on a variety of scales.[14]
By the late summer of 1955, the administration seemed
close to achieving the goal of Operation Candor: full control of public discourse, allowing
full freedom for whatever policy changes the administration desired. As Geoffrey Hodgson has written, “consensus
was settling like snow over
After 30 months in office, Eisenhower seemed to have
achieved the chief goals that had propelled him to run for president: rallying the nation around a united vision of
its purpose, and depriving Senator Robert Taft and the Taftite foreign policy
of power and influence. He had also
outlasted the McCarthyite crusade and become unchallenged as the dominant voice
in public discourse. So he was free to
make the unlimited
In fact, though, he had publicly abandoned both world
peace and cold war victory as policy goals.
His great discursive achievement was to have apocalypse management accepted
as both the best way to wage war and the best way to bring peace. “Open Skies,” the man who made the offer, and
the word peace that was so often on
his lips—they all became the most concrete symbols of a new, eschatological
hope that all apocalyptic threats might be managed securely forever. How did he and his new paradigm achieve such
great popularity? Part of the answer
lies in the immense personal appeal of the war hero who spoke the words. His honesty and sincerity seemed, to most
Americans, beyond doubt. Of course many
of his public utterances were untrue or deceptive, crafted for rhetorical
effect. But the broad, general approach
that he advocated in public was very much the same approach that he took in
private.
The president set the tone for the whole executive
branch of government. The imagery of
apocalypse management unified the administration's public discourse just as the
principles of the New Look unified its policy, and the two were integrally
linked. If, and only if, the imagery was
accepted, the policy's various elements joined together in a convincing
logic. The policy, in turn, translated
the new imagery and its attendant discourse into operational terms, making the
imagery seem a plausible basis for policymaking, for national security, and for
peace. So the administration could give
a powerful impression of strong leadership steering the nation in a clear
direction.
The triumph of apocalypse management should also be
credited, in part, to the power of the news media, which now took the
linguistic scaffolding of apocalypse management for granted. The press never
spelled out its axioms explicitly. No
journalists warned the nation of this dramatic new turn in its public discourse
or offered any analysis of its deeper implications. It all merely happened. Certainly the nation’s political elite had a
disproportionate influence on the news media and therefore on public discourse. And any language promoted by Eisenhower would
probably have been triumphant, simply because of his personal popularity and
prestige.
It would be wrong, though, to view the domestic public
as merely passive recipients of language and policies imposed by the power
elite. The public was not forced to
accept the new paradigm. Ordinary
citizens by the millions had to participate in the process, actively
appropriating the president's language and integrating it into their
worldview. Their willingness to do so
testifies to the intrinsic appeals of the new discourse.
Apocalypse management appealed because it offered both
innovative change and familiar continuity in public discourse. Traditional discursive modes could be invoked
convincingly because there was no conscious recognition that they had been
eclipsed by a new mode. Neither the
president nor his advisors, nor anyone else, consciously set out to create a
distinctive new paradigm. The content of
their unifying vision and purpose had been determined more by chance than by
design. Simply by meeting immediate
problems from day to day, they managed, through some combination of talent and
luck, to succeed most impressively.
As a candidate, Eisenhower had promised to move the
nation beyond the Truman administration's seeming acceptance of cold war
stalemate. The public now expected
something new—but only in the sense of a change from Truman’s policies. Those policies were frustrating because they
denied the traditional view of the proper
The challenge now was to legitimate a New Look that
did not intend to fulfill that promise.
The president had to say that he was going forward to a new policy, yet
also going backward to pre-cold war days, when in fact he was doing neither; he
was only using new words to legitimate what was essentially a continuation of
existing policy. And the new words had
to seem to grow naturally out of familiar widely-held traditions.
This was a daunting challenge, but the apocalypse
management paradigm allowed Eisenhower to succeed masterfully. It both encompassed and transformed at least
four familiar images of the goal and purpose of American public life: apocalyptic purity, a liberal international
commonwealth, a “realistic” balance of power, and an isolated life of domestic
tranquility. The New Look offered an
image of strong, confident, highly rational leaders preserving domestic
tranquility by deftly blending threats of apocalyptic war, hard-headed
“realist” power plays, and calm, flexible Wilsonian negotiation. The intertwined images of disarmament
negotiations and “massive retaliation” seemed to satisfy, and thus unify, the
demands of all four strands. The promise
of "more bang for the buck" certainly made sense in terms of all four. And the president could present himself as a
man of peace in the language of all four traditions, using all of them as
expressions of a millennial hope for eternal peace and security.
Apocalypse management succeeded in part by harmonizing
the contradictions among the familiar traditions.[17] Apocalypticism assumes that all good is on
“our” side and all evil on the other; “realism” is based on the Augustinian
premise that “we” are sinners too, though “our” sin is held in check by an
orderly political process. Eisenhower
avoided this contradiction by assuming that selfishness in the “free world” was
channeled into economic acquisitiveness, never into military aggression. In terms of national security policy, he
generally depicted the
Another contradiction was even more basic. Liberal internationalism and apocalypticism
both call for a global transformation, moving the world from a current state of
conflict to a future state of harmony.
“Realism” and “isolationism” both begin from the premise that peace
means protecting an existing state of affairs that already reigns on one’s own
side of the border. The president's
language seemed to transcend this contradiction. Every potential movement of the “free world”
defensive perimeter was assumed to signal apocalyptic threat. Thus every confrontation along the perimeter
became an apocalyptic crisis, which had to be managed at all costs. So the language of dynamic confrontation
served to underscore the fundamental goal of preserving the status quo. As John Spanier has observed: “The only kind of dynamism the country could
afford was verbal dynamism. And this was
all the people seemed to want.”[19]
By providing a sense of safety, the new language of
peace and restraint made cold war words and images seemed even more familiar,
stable, credible, and desirable, because they were now embodied in such a
seemingly unified body of discourse, articulated by such a calm and reassuring
leader, enacted in such a comprehensive and plausible strategic policy. Eisenhower's public language blended
reassuring words of optimism with words of anxiety. His discourse and policies seemed to promise
change without risk, the greatest possible gain with minimal pain. There was apparently no need to choose
between conquest and chaos. No matter
what any individual feared or hoped for, and no matter how contradictory those
hopes and fears, apocalypse management could plausibly claim to be the answer. So his policies seemed the only sensible
course to follow. And his grim warnings
made the alternatives seem too dangerous to consider.
Notes to Chapter 9
[1]
Speech notes and drafts in AWF, Speech Series,
[2]
White House Statement, 7/25/55, PPP, 1955, 725. At the first post-Geneva press conference, his
opening statement scaled back the eschatological promise again. He would offer “no certainty of a new
era.” It was only “possible that
something to the great benefit of man may eventuate.” The press corps was not eager to get a more
precise reading. There were virtually no
questions on
[3] NYT, 7/24/55, IV: 3, I: 1. A Denver Post headline (7/26/55, 1) epitomized a common related theme: “Big 4 Talks Trim War Danger.”
[4]
[5] New York Herald-Tribune quoted in SLPD, 7/24/55, 2C; SLPD, 7/24/55, 2D, and 7/22/55, 2B; Atlanta Constitution quoted in Time, 8/1/55, 26.
[6] NYT, 7/23/55, 16; Hartford Courant quoted in SLPD, 7/25/55, 1B; SLPD, 7/22/55, 4A. The Times (7/24/55, 1) noted “a striking contrast between the words of President Eisenhower a few months ago, when he called for acts proving Soviet sincerity, and the statement he made here that he…[was] convinced of their sincere desire for peace.”
[7] Newsweek, 8/8/55, 18; SLPD, 7/24/55, 1A, 6A; Newsweek, 8/1/55, 17; NYT, 7/24/55, IV: 1; NYT, 7/26/55, 1, 24. Many sources reported that "Open Skies" had been spawned by the concerns of the military, originating in the JCS office or the Air Force; see, e.g., SLPD, 7/23/55, 2A; Time, 8/1/55, 17. This story was so widely reported that it must have been planted by high-level administration sources (perhaps to deter journalists from seeking the true origins of the plan) or by military sources seeking to claim credit for the success.
[8] SLPD, 7/24/55, 1D. The Chicago Tribune was predictably vehement in criticizing Eisenhower: “This plan was put forward not to be accepted but to be rejected.…We are to prove Russian insincerity by demonstrating our own insincerity”: quoted in Time, 8/1/55, 26.
[9]
[10] Newsweek, 8/1/55, 18 and 8/15/55, 32; NYT, 7/24/55, IV: 8. See also Time, 8/8/55, 18; San Francisco Chronicle, 7/25/55, 19.
[11] SLPD, 7/22/55, 2A; Chicago Daily News quoted in SLPD, 7/24/55, 2C; Time, 8/1/55, 17; NYT, 7/24/55, IV: 3; Christian Science Monitor, 7/23/55, 18. Times’ Columnist Arthur Krock reported that Eisenhower had “outmaneuvered the Soviets at several points, and his passionate sincerity in the quest for peace was never more effectively displayed”: NYT, 7/24/55, IV: 8. His colleague C. L. Sulzberger found the Soviets “impressed by the stark simplicity and grandeur of his views”: NYT, 7/25/55, 18.
[12]
NYT, 7/24/55, IV: 8;
[13]
C. D. Jackson, “The
[14] Many critics also claimed that a conventional buildup would stimulate rather than depress the economy. For a good summary of the criticisms in their political context see Reichard, "The Domestic Politics of National Security."
[15]
[16]
As Walter LaFeber points out, this fundamental shift in the Republican Party
would allow Eisenhower's Republican successors, from Nixon to the Bushes, to
pursue the same global reach:
[17]
Eisenhower's tremendous ability to blend opposites in his public image was a
key to his public appeal, as Crable argues in “Ike: Identification, Argument, and Paradoxical
Appeal.” By 1955, two-thirds of
self-identified liberals saw him as a liberal, while two-thirds of
conservatives saw him as a conservative:
[18]
Eisenhower did sometimes share Dulles' concern for war by miscalculation, which
implies the
[19] Spanier, American Foreign Policy Since World War II, 103.