When Eisenhower entered the White House, he
immediately confronted a host of far-flung cold war crises, flashpoints, and
hot spots. Among others, he had to deal with ever-present tensions in Germany
(especially in Berlin), uncertainty over control of Iran’s oil fields, the
undefined status of Austria and Taiwan, the communist-led rebellion against
French colonialism in Vietnam, and, above all, the increasingly unpopular war
in Korea. But the new president was
determined to do more than merely react to old and new cracks in the wall of
containment. He wanted to forge an
overall cold war strategy that he could implement proactively, a strategy that
would give him control over events before they became crises.
From the outset, Eisenhower counted on psychological
warfare as an important part of his strategy.
While still a candidate, he had been intrigued by a report he received
on a conference on psychological warfare held in May, 1952, at
A few days later, the president wrote to
The project took a dramatic turn on March 4, 1953,
when news reached the White House that the Soviet leader, Josef Stalin, lay dying.
The president generally supported this approach. He told the NSC that he wanted to reach out to
the Russian people and leaders, “to see if we can’t somehow crack the Iron
Curtain and thaw out the Cold War.” The
NSC officially called for “psychological exploitation of this event,” and
Nevertheless, Rostow’s first draft of the speech drew
a sharp line between the American pursuit of security, through arms control and
a free
The call for German unification would also be
understood as a call to remove
“If these
purposes are to be fulfilled,” Rostow stressed, “it is essential that
the initiative have serious diplomatic substance, and be developed with full
professional diplomatic skill, even if the chances of immediate success in
negotiation are rated nil.” The
overall image had to be one of “straight-face high seriousness,” and genuine
desire to resolve differences, not mere propaganda. Otherwise the speech would sound like mere
propaganda and thus lose its propaganda value.[9]
The president could hardly have misunderstood the goals
of
The new administration’s overriding foreign policy
goal was the rapid formation of a formal pro-U.S. military alliance in western
Europe, the European Defense Community (EDC).
Without collective security, Eisenhower wrote to Alfred Gruenther, there
would be “only chaos in the world and eventual distress and worse for us.” Failure to create the EDC would be
“cataclysmic.”[11]
Dulles agreed, continually reminding his colleagues of
his worst fear: If the European allies
saw the possibility of any negotiated relaxation of cold war tensions, they
might see less need to support the EDC. So
he insisted on putting off negotiations on any issue, and particularly on
Dulles feared that any kind of serious disarmament
proposal might upset the delicate diplomacy needed to secure the EDC. So he told the NSC that on disarmament
"the position which the
At the same time, though, as Eisenhower often
stressed, the alliance was also imperiled by western European fears of nuclear
war. He told his cabinet on March 6 that
“it’s cold comfort to a guy pushing up daisies, after his country’s been
overrun, to know that someone’s going to bomb the Kremlin. This whole idea that the bomb is a cheap way
to solve things is awfully wrong.” The
next day he assured Dulles privately that what British leaders “really want to
know is that we are not starting a war.”
A few days later he told the NSC that “the European governments
supported EDC but were afraid to approve it because they feared their
people.” To mollify those people, the
State Department planners shared the PSB’s goals. Charles Bohlen wrote that “the Department of
State is urgently examining the possibility of some initiative [to] confront
the new leadership with a new situation regarding decisions not previously made
under Stalin.” Dulles insisted that the
However, State disagreed with the PSB tactics. The diplomats feared that putting too much
pressure on the Kremlin leadership might consolidate rather than splinter the
new leadership. “We can well afford to
give the internal stresses of the Soviet system time to become acute,” one memo
suggested. “In the meanwhile, nothing is better calculated to increase Soviet
nervous strain than studied American silence.”
State planners especially opposed any proposal for a foreign ministers’
meeting, which would cause unpredictable complications with European allies and
“have a very slowing-down effect on the EDC.”[16]
As Klaus Larres points out, Dulles’ State Department
advisors were uncertain exactly what position to take because the direction of
This was clear at the NSC meeting of March 11.
Dulles interrupted
In our attempt to destroy the unity of the Soviet
orbit we must not jeopardize the unity of our own coalition.…The Soviet was now
involved in a family funeral, and it might be best to wait until the corpse was
buried and the mourners gone off to their homes to read the will, before we
begin our campaign to create discord in the family. If we moved precipitately we might very well
enhance Soviet family loyalty and disrupt the free world’s [loyalty].[19]
The debate, then, was not over goals or strategy, but
only over timing.
Eisenhower himself stood somewhere in between the two
views on timing, though the issue was not very crucial to him (as his later
careless vacillation on it showed). The
most important thing was not when such a meeting was held, but how it was planned. Earlier that day he had told Emmet Hughes
that he was “not too keen on any 4-power meeting unless we have some pretty
clear objectives.” So his speech must
include “some pretty clear proposals.”[20] Without an agreed agenda of specific issues,
he often asserted, the Soviets would turn any talks into a propaganda
forum.
As an experienced war commander, Eisenhower knew that
defense was as important as attack. He
agreed with
We do need something
dramatic to rally the peoples of the world around some idea, some hope, of a
better future. A four-power conference
would not do it, but the President might say that he would be ready and willing
to meet with anyone anywhere from the
Eisenhower’s decision on the four-power meeting was
tossed out almost parenthetically at an NSC meeting, where he shifted the focus
of the speech to an idea he had received from pollster Samuel Lubell: He should speak about "our determination
to raise the general standard of living throughout the world" by
suggesting immediate limits on arms spending, with the savings to go toward
increased consumer goods.[22]
Explaining the idea he called “butter over guns,”
Lubell acknowledged that the Soviets would probably reject it. But he insisted that his plan still “would
have an enormous psychological impact on the whole world.” And “however they decided, [it] would sharpen
any division that exists in the Kremlin.”
A higher living standard in the communist bloc was the key to getting
the Soviet leaders to “loosen their grip” on the satellites and on their own
people. The alternative was a spiraling
arms race that could make it impossible “to keep our cherished American
ways.” By monitoring compliance and
fixing the percentage of each nation’s economy that could be devoted to
armaments, he contended, his plan would give the
Eisenhower was drawn to Lubell’s plan because it
combined psychological warfare gains with practical benefits for the
Administration officials pondered a proposal to allow
only 5% of steel production for armaments. Dulles called the formula obviously
“a phony, because our production is so much bigger than theirs -- and they
would know it was a phony.” Any plan to
limit military expenditures to a fixed percentage of total production would
help the
The brief NSC discussion on March 11 focused on the
prospect of embarrassing communist governments, which could provide few
consumer goods for their people.
"Secretary Dulles expressed great interest in this idea of the
president’s,” citing “the enormous difficulty experienced by the Soviet Union
in keeping its satellites from participating in the
Throughout the genesis of the speech there was
virtually no discussion of its domestic impact.
When
The body of Rostow’s new draft of March 11 dropped the
call for a foreign ministers’ meeting, which Eisenhower had vetoed. But it retained all the other substantive
points of the first draft, and it took a harsher tone, demanding that the
Soviet Union take steps to bring “real peace” in
No one involved in preparing the speech rejected the
basic themes and aims of Rostow’s work.
But some wanted more effective wording.
“It doesn’t say anything,” Dulles told Emmet Hughes, asking him to write
a new version.[29] The next day Hughes asked Dulles and
Jackson: “Is our appeal aimed at
satellites to stir their defection -- or directly to
Setting out to write a speech that would achieve both
goals, Hughes produced a draft titled “The Chance for Peace.” It incorporated all the substantive points in
the Rostow draft but noticeably downplayed the call for the Soviet Union to
join the
On March 16 Hughes presented his draft to Eisenhower. In his memoir, Ordeal of Power, Hughes recorded and interpreted the conversation
of that “memorable day” in florid, melodramatic prose. “The President was dreaming a quite
splendid—and sensible—dream,” Hughes wrote, depicting a president forcefully
advancing this new dream of world peace against his secretary of state’s many
“technical or tactical objections.” His
account has been a chief prooftext for historians who assert that Eisenhower
sincerely wanted to ease cold war tensions and move the world toward peace.[32]
Eisenhower himself later told an interviewer that
Hughes’ memoir had little value: “He
asked with some feeling, why would one want to read such a book as that? Hughes wasn’t there. He didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t know any more about it than my
grandson.” However, if Hughes’ diary is
to be believed, he did know something about what was going on because he had an
extensive conversation with the president about the speech. Yet the image of the peace-seeking visionary
in Hughes’ published memoir is not supported by his own diary entry, nor by any
other evidence. The president suggested nothing to Hughes that would have the
practical effect of resolving any cold war conflicts.[33]
According to Hughes’ diary, he told the
president: “It has not been decided
whether we should be or are making a serious overture in all this -- or simply
making propaganda.”[34] The president replied that he wanted no
“tired of indictments of the Soviet regime” or “slick sophisticated propaganda
devices.” Rather, he wanted specific proposals for the “butter, bread, clothes,
hospitals, schools” that could come from reduced arms expenditures. Perhaps Lubell’s proposal sounded like a fresh
and exciting “surge of resolve” to Hughes, since he had not been at the March
11 NSC meeting. But nothing was really
new here. Eisenhower was essentially
just explaining to Hughes the Lubell idea, as he understood it.
When Hughes objected that the State Department was
happy to have a good propaganda speech but quite hesitant about “making a
serious overture,” Eisenhower responded petulantly that he wanted to “make a
serious bid for peace”—just as Jackson and Rostow had been urging all
along. But he would not present his
speech at the UN, where “you no sooner give the speech than the Russians are
back debating you.” Evidently he wanted
a setting that would safeguard him from any direct exchange with the
enemy. He lamented: “What is in almost everyone’s heart is peace,
you want so much to do something -- and then you wonder if there really is
anything you can do by words or promises.”
Apparently the president understood that he would offer nothing but
words and promises.[35]
A summary of Hughes’ conversation with Dulles the same
day corroborates part of this diary account (and nowhere contradicts it). The president had ruled out the UN venue and
stressed “concrete proposals,” Hughes said, such as “cutting armaments to 5%,
getting armies out of this country or that country, free elections in this
country or that country.” Dulles
wondered out loud whether Eisenhower had changed his mind and was now
considering proposing a foreign ministers’ meeting. Hughes saw good reason for Dulles’ “caution
in reacting to such surges of presidential resolve; they were prone to arise
suddenly and somewhat surprisingly.”[36]
Eisenhower did suggest to Hughes a few offers that
appeared to be conciliatory but would actually call for “obviously impossible
concessions” from the Soviets, as Stephen Ambrose notes. His only other substantive point was to
delete the sharp anti-Soviet rhetoric and insist more explicitly on calling the
plan a “serious bid for peace.” Some
historians have seen this new emphasis on the label as a response to the speech
delivered by Malenkov the day before, declaring the Soviet Union willing to
resolve its conflicts with the U.S. peacefully.
But Eisenhower had decided on a psychological warfare gesture, offering
words and promises that sounded like a “serious bid for peace,” well before
Malenkov’s speech. In his conversation
with Hughes, he suggested no change in the basic cold war stance that had
shaped all the drafts of the speech, for they expressed his own views rather
precisely. He never admitted the
possibility that the new Soviet leadership might be willing to make real
compromises to ease cold war tensions.”[37]
Apparently Hughes did not come away from the meeting
with any clear impression of a president single-mindedly devoted to peace. The next day he drafted a memo asking:
“I. Major
Question: Do we wish at this time to
negotiate directly with the Soviets?
1. Only
the answer to this meets the question:
is a Presidential declaration at this time meant:
(a.) To
wage political warfare or
(b.) To
invite political settlement?[38]
Hughes received no clear answer to his question, because everyone involved in the process understood that the speech was intended to achieve both goals simultaneously. No one except Hughes saw any need to choose between the two.
At a March 17 meeting, the president recapitulated his
main points of the day before. “I’d like
us to prepare a speech,” he added, “just ASSUMING that Malenkov was a
reasonable man with whom we had some differences to iron out -- we may know he
isn’t -- but let’s start with that assumption and talk accordingly.” Hughes apparently saw this as evidence of the
president’s new direction, his “splendid dream” of peace.
On March 20, Eisenhower sent
Hughes still found himself “in fog of confusion.” He focused on “cutting out acid material on
satellites, centering more on the disarmament point, spelling out material
benefits to all peoples of the latter.”
But the redraft was still a staunchly anticommunist document,
culminating in a peremptory challenge to the Soviets to prove their peaceful
intent by deeds.[41] Hughes’ draft pleased the president because
it included some specific applications of Lubell’s idea. But Eisenhower showed little interest in the
details of the proposals.
Two small additions that the president called for were
quite telling. First, he wanted “some
strong mention of the fact that we are going to go RIGHT AHEAD rearming until
it’s clear we no longer have to.” Then
he added as a fundamental
Hughes had to find words that would be acceptable to
all in the upper echelon of the administration, which meant words that would
effectively achieve all of the speech’s many goals. He solved the problem when he recognized
(perhaps unconsciously) that all of the goals involved choices between mutually
exclusive alternatives. The speech aimed
to force the new
The same contrast of hope for peace versus fear of war
would also help to draw the eastern European satellites out of Soviet
orbit.
Hughes wove all these
dichotomies together into a single dichotomy of two divergent roads. The
A few days before the speech was given, Eisenhower
suggested a sentence affirming
Indeed, in last minute conversations about the text,
Eisenhower told Hughes that it should put all the onus on the Soviets,
demanding “some ACTS, ANY acts that show a desire to be nice boys…as evidence
of sincerity.” The kind of steps he
suggested would clearly redound to
The final product of this long speechwriting process,
“The Chance for Peace,” was delivered on April 16, 1953 to the American
Society of Newspaper Editors. Often said to be Eisenhower's
greatest speech,[45] it
established his image as a president sincerely dedicated to reducing cold war
tensions and advancing the cause of peace.
It also set the tone for much of his cold war policy, as well as
rhetoric, for the next eight years. Many
historians who have written about the speech have concluded that Eisenhower
sincerely wanted peace.[46] Others have found the speech mere propaganda.[47] The debate is understandable, because the
peace speech was intended to accomplish both goals, and no one in the
administration (except Hughes) saw any need to choose between the two. Eisenhower could call it quite sincerely “a
serious bid for peace” while consciously intending it to be a weapon of
psychological and political warfare. He was
not contradicting himself. He was
convinced that a serious bid for peace would be a most effective maneuver in
the cold war.
The final version of the text began: “In this spring of 1953 the free world weighs
one question above all others: the chances for a just peace for all
peoples.” Already, the peace / war
dichotomy was identified with the choice between justice and injustice. Immediately, it added the hope / fear
dichotomy, identifying hope with the war’s end in 1945 and fear with the
present: “The eight years that have
passed have seen that hope waver, grow dim, and almost die. And the shadow of fear again has darkly
lengthened across the world.” This
change was explained with Hughes’ elegant (if deceptive) simplicity: “The nations of the world divided to follow
two distinct roads. The
The
The Soviets’ choice, Eisenhower complained, had
compelled the
But the deeds the text demanded amounted to Soviet
capitulation on every significant contested issue. It called for an end to all communist
movements in
A decade letter Eisenhower acknowledged that in 1953
he had “but little hope” that the proposals he offered would be acceptable to
the new Soviet leaders.[49] He did not mention, though, what he also knew
at the time: for purposes of
psychological warfare, it hardly mattered how those leaders responded. In fact rejected proposals might well yield a
greater victory in the psychological warfare campaign, while forestalling
negotiations that the
Hughes understood his boss’ penchant for religious
language, and he used it sparingly but powerfully to underscore the political
message. An unending arms race, with its
“life of perpetual fear and tension” would leave “humanity hanging from a cross
of iron,” he wrote.[50] The implication was clearly that the Soviets
were the modern-day Roman crucifiers, and the
If the Soviets turned from their evil ways, though,
they would foster “the rebirth of trust among nations.” “We are ready,” the text pledged, “to strive
to redeem the near-lost hopes of our day.”
Rebirth and redemption would come only when the crucifiers adopted the
faith of the crucified. The sign of that
redemption would be disarmament, “the next great work.” And on that subject “the formula matters less
than the faith.” The economic fruits of
disarmament, disbursed to underdeveloped lands, would “assist all peoples to
know the blessings of productive freedom.”
This proposal, the text concluded, came from “our firm faith that God
created man to enjoy, not destroy, the fruits of the earth and of their own
toil.” Its acceptance by the Soviet
leaders would lead to a paradisaical “golden age of freedom and of peace.”[51] The speech was built upon the same Manichaean
dualism that underlay all cold war discourse in the
There was nothing new about a cold war president
stepping up the pressure while declaring his fervent desire for world
peace. Harry Truman had been doing it
for years. But in Truman’s rhetoric
(especially in the last years of his presidency) the only route to peace was a
military buildup large enough to deter Soviet aggression and thus head off
World War III. “The Chance for Peace”
mentioned
Eisenhower hoped to reap cold war advantage by drawing
on the rhetorical tradition of Wilsonian liberal internationalism. He announced as his goal “a just and lasting
peace…founded upon decent trust and cooperative effort … just relations and
honest understanding with all other nations.”
By the logic of the speech, though, and of all Eisenhower's discourse,
this kind of global peace was impossible as long as any nations remained
outside the liberal democratic capitalist system. “A just and lasting peace” meant “a world in
which all peoples can be productive and prosperous.” For Eisenhower this meant, by definition, a
democratic capitalist world, a global corporate commonwealth. Privately, Eisenhower did occasionally speak
about a day when the Soviet Union and
But he had no hope that the Soviet Union or
This left the him with two usable understandings of
peace. He could speak of peace in a
future world where the Soviet Union continued as the “other” but was shorn of
its influence upon all other countries (except
Yet the logic of the speech assumed a second meaning
of peace. Starting from the premise that
(in Lubell’s words) “what
When linked with the assumption that the communist
threat would endure for the foreseeable future, this view yielded an obvious
corollary: the
In his inaugural address, Eisenhower had defined peace
as “the practice and fulfillment of our whole faith.” Now he was spelling out the implications of
that definition. But he was doing so by
employing three understandings of peace that were all mutually exclusive. One foresaw the expansion of the American way
throughout the world. A second assumed
the Iron Curtain as the limit to that expansion, but it foresaw a day when
communist nations still existed but no longer posed a threat. A third denied that such a day could ever
come. It implied that peace meant not
expanding, but perpetually defending, the borders of the “free world.” All of these meanings of peace were employed
at various points in the “Chance” speech.
Eisenhower was never committed to only one meaning of
peace because he would not give up the other meanings; they all remained in tension with each
other. He had long been using the term
in these different ways on different occasions for different purposes; he was
still doing so.[54] Out of this conceptual confusion came, quite
unwittingly, a new notion of peace that did mask, and went some way toward
resolving, the contradictions: peace as
apocalypse management.
The apocalypse management paradigm stood out most
clearly when the president spoke about the need for negotiated settlements
between the enemies. To achieve its
psychological warfare aims, the “Chance” speech had to insist on a process of
negotiation. Each of the three meanings
of peace it employed pointed to negotiation as the only route to peace. It couched its offer in the language of
Wilsonian liberal internationalism:
reasonable people would compose their differences through discussion and
compromise, in a spirit of “mutual trust and mutual aid…decent trust and cooperative
effort", rather than fighting and killing.[55]
Yet the speech’s psywar aims also demanded an image of
peace as a dramatic verbal contest. This
made the speech itself an example of and a vital step in the process. It ruled out substantive
However, the president's words clearly implied that
the
The negotiating table became a microcosm of the entire
world. The enemies would be forced to
interact verbally, yet remain quite separate, each protecting itself from the
other. Therefore, peace meant
invulnerability through untouchability, as two parallel sets of actions
unfolded simultaneously on separate sides of the Iron Curtain. The permanent absence of relationship would
itself be the firmest guarantee that the enemy could do no harm. Each side would seek to safeguard itself and
gain advantage over the other in negotiations, agreeing merely to small
limitations in its military capability and to refrain from using that
capability against the other. At most
this might lead to reciprocal, exquisitely balanced restrictions on arsenals
and behaviors, so that neither side could move militarily against the
other.
Indeed peace, as the “Chance” speech depicted it,
would freeze all geopolitical movement by affording total
In this new understanding of peace, endless apocalypse
management would be both the means to and the new definition of victory. Of course this formula for victory in the
cold war was equally the formula for a keeping the peace. The more cold war victories the U.S. won, the
closer the world would come to peace—and vice versa. And it would all be done
primarily through an adroit blend of public and private, threatening and
promising, words. So it made perfect
sense to call psychological warfare maneuvers serious efforts for peace. Within this new paradigm, the
Within his paradigm, it was quite logical that he went
on to lay all the blame on Soviet conduct.
If total peace meant discourse from a position of invulnerable security,
Soviet concessions were the only route to peace. If the Soviet leaders rejected the
president’s offers—as he assumed they would—he could claim quite sincerely that
they were rejecting the necessary foundations of a peaceful world. Two days after the “Chance” speech, he had
Dulles make a hard-line speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors,
warning that the chance for peace “must always remain obscure” because the new
Soviet leaders “accept no guidance from the moral law.” The president's doubt that the Soviets would
accept his gesture of peace “became a self-fulfilling prophecy once he gave
Dulles license to give his speech,” as Richard Immerman says.[58]
However, Eisenhower's own speech did far more to make
his prediction of continuing insecurity a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once peace was equated with “the American
way,” there could be total peace only when “the American way” prevailed
throughout the world. That was now the
definition not only of peace and victory, but also of national security. Yet the assumption of Soviet rejection and
permanent enmity offered no hope for the peace that would also mean victory and
security. The very way that the “Chance”
speech spoke about security predicted a continuing state of national
insecurity.
The world’s response to the “Chance” speech was of
vital concern to the administration. A
memo “based upon a consensus of [State] Department thinking,” began: “President Eisenhower's speech of April 16,
designed to seize the political and psychological initiative from the
Eisenhower cautioned Churchill against any “precipitate
initiatives…[which] might have the effect of giving the Soviets an easy way out
of the position in which I think they are now placed.” Jackson made the point more strongly to
Dulles: “If they show any indication of
reaching for any of the easier carrots that have been dangled, our tactic
should be to keep up the pressure before the world by tying in each forward
step with the next one which we will say must be taken by the Russians.”[60]
Llewellyn White of the State Department's
International Press Service told his staff “to plan a closely integrated
campaign employing all our media and running well into FY54, such as we have
never tackled. We have not had since the
inception of the Marshall Plan such a mine of positive propaganda
material.” Of course the propaganda and
psychological warfare bonanza could be mined only if it was not acknowledged
publicly. Undersecretary of State Walter
Bedell Smith gave State officials around the world the official line: “President's speech not repeat not gambit of
psychological warfare. It is sincere,
moral presentation (which incidentally takes psychological initiative).” [61]
Relatively little attention was given to shaping
domestic response. Nevertheless all
domestic news media were alerted that the “Chance” speech would be the
administration’s first major foreign policy statement, and the speech received
headline treatment.[62] Press reaction echoed the speech itself,
recapitulating its goals and its rhetorical paradigm. Virtually every story was framed against the
backdrop of the Soviet “peace offensive” and the fear that it might be giving
the Soviets a significant new advantage in the cold war. The dominant tone of the press reporting was
summed up in the headlines:
·
“Ike Challenges the Russians; Prove You Want Peace, He Asks”
·
“President's Challenge to
·
“Ike Starts All-Out Drive for Peace; Campaign Puts ‘Heat’ On
·
“Eisenhower Challenges
·
“Initiative to
·
“Eisenhower Said to Force Hand of Kremlin on Peace."[63]
In the days following the speech, White House
operatives openly encouraged more of the same, with marked success. Front-page follow-up stories bore headlines
such as, “Eisenhower Bid to Russia Start of All-Out ‘Peace Drive,’ White House
Says” and “Envoys Rallied For Drive; Told to Spread Eisenhower's Views
Everywhere.”[64]
Editorial
praise of the speech amounted to a national sigh of relief that “
A few publications, like Time, found the speech most important not as a cold war riposte but
as “a new, determined attempt by the U.S. to define its own nature and its
purposes … It successfully projected into a divided world the universal
philosophy of the U.S.” Eisenhower had
expressed “the deep desire of the American people for peace,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
editorialized. He had “given the sacred
word ‘peace’ an American definition,”
Life concluded.[66]
No news organ questioned, explored, nor even spelled
out, that definition. By framing it in
terms of a cold war showdown, the press reports also replicated and
disseminated the speech’s crucial innovation:
peace now meant a world not united, but divided, with the
A few analysts, like the AP’s John Hightower, raised
the possibility that “the speech laid down terms so tough they might discourage
the Kremlin” from pursuing any settlement.
But Times columnist McCormick
said explicitly what was implicit in the whole corpus of press reports: the Soviet response to the speech mattered
little, if at all: “It is evident that
President Eisenhower has rallied the free world behind him at a critical
moment. He has given it hope, courage
and new confidence in the future. This
is in some ways a greater achievement than if his challenge to Soviet power is
accepted.”[68]
Underscoring the doubts about Soviet desire for peace,
journalists also stressed Eisenhower’s assurance that the
Virtually every aspect of this reporting served to
reaffirm and celebrate the enduring truth of the prevailing cold war
discourse. So it could not be presented
as a major shift in
Eisenhower and his aides
would refer to this speech often in future public pronouncements. Its wide popularity encouraged them to point
to it proudly as an official statement of administration policy and a proof of the
president's commitment to peace. Every
such statement enhanced its prestige and its influence. Several top-secret policy documents would
cite it in the coming months, particularly in framing policy on
disarmament. The administration’s most
secret policies would in fact be guided by the ideal of apocalypse
management—not as a way of easing cold war tensions, but as a way to define and
achieve the goal of its cold war efforts.
Forged as a rhetorical means to cold war ends, this ideal would become
an end in itself, shaping
Notes to Chapter 2
[1] Minutes
and Abbott Washburn to Eisenhower, undated, both in C.D. Jackson Papers, Box 83,
“Princeton Meeting (1)”; Eisenhower to Jackson,
8/22/52, C.D. Jackson Papers, Box 83 “Princeton Meeting (1).” According to
Herbert Parmet,
[2]
[3] Eisenhower to Wilson, 2/21/53, AWF, Administration Series, Box 41, “Wilson, Charles E. (GE)”; John Foster Dulles Papers, White House Memoranda, Box 1, “White House Correspondence (5)” (a handwritten note on this memo, apparently added in the Sate Department, reads: “Chas Wilson memo”).
[4] Hughes Diary, 3/6/53, Emmet John Hughes Papers, Box 1, Seeley G. Mudd Library, Princeton University; Jackson to Cutler, 3/4/53, AWF, Administration Series, Box 29, “Psychological Warfare”; William J. Morgan to H.S. Craig, 3/4/53, White House Office Central Files, NSC Staff Papers, PSB Central Files Series, Box 8. See Brands, Cold Warriors, 122.
[5]
AWF,
DDE Diaries Series, Box 3, “Dec. 52 - July 53 (3)”;
NSC, 3/4/53, FRUS, 1952-1954, 8: 1091-94. Harold Stassen suggests that this
was a way to “shift the play” to
[6]
Rostow, Europe After Stalin, 103; A
Message to the Soviet Government and the Russian Peoples, C.D. Jackson Papers,
Box 104, “Stalin’s Death (3),” published in Rostow, Europe After Stalin, 84-87.
See also untitled undated memo in Bryce Harlow Papers, Acc. 67-56,
[7]
Robert L. Ivie, “Dwight D. Eisenhower's ‘Chance for Peace,”; Rostow,
[8] CENIS memo to the CIA, 3/5/53, C.D. Jackson Records, Box 6, “Rostow, Walter W. (4)”; untitled undated memo in Bryce Harlow Papers, Acc. 67-56, Box 15, “Chance for Peace (3),” published in Rostow, Europe After Stalin, 90.
[9] Untitled
undated memo in Bryce Harlow Papers, Acc. 67-56, Box 15, “Chance for Peace
(3),” published in Rostow, Europe After
Stalin,pp. 89, 90 (emphasis in original).
See Appleby, “Eisenhower and Arms Control,”
74: “To
[10] Emmet J. Hughes, Memorandum for the President, 3/10/53, FRUS, 1952-1954, 8: 1114.
[11] Eisenhower
to Gruenther, 2/14/53, cited in Duchin, “The ‘Agonizing Reappraisal,’” 203;
[12] NSC, 3/11/53, FRUS, 1952-1954, 8: 1123; Ninkovich, Germany and the United States, 94, 98, 102-3; Schwartz, America’s Germany, 283. See also Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace, 121, 149 and Steininger, “John Foster Dulles, the European Defense Community, and the German Question.”
[13] NSC, 2/18/53, FRUS, 1952-1954, 2.2: 1108.
[14]
Hughes
Diary, 3/6/53; Memorandum of Conversation, 3/7/55, John Foster
Dulles Papers, Chronological Series, 99.
[15]
Bohlen, Memorandum on Stalin’s Death, FRUS, 1952-1954, 8: 1111; Nitze to Dulles,
4/2/53, John Foster Dulles Papers, Draft Presidential Speeches,
[16]
Hughes, Memorandum for the President, 3/10/53, FRUS, 1952-1954, 8:
1114; Bohlen to Hughes, 3/9/53, Bryce Harlow Papers, Acc. 67-56, , 3/10/53); he
failed to note the extensive agreement on general aims.
[17]
Larres, “Eisenhower and the First Forty Days After Stalin’s Death,” 444. This is in line with Larres’ overall finding
that “in general, Stalin’s death made hardly any impact on the thinking of the
experts in the
[18] NSC,
3/11/53, FRUS, 1952-1954, 8: 1124,
1118, 1119; Rostow, Europe After Stalin,
39, 89; ibid., 109-110. Paper Presented
by W. W. Rostow, 5/11/53, FRUS, 1952-1954, 8: 1182,
provides a useful contemporary summary of Jackson’s and Dulles’ positions; cf.
Jackson to Dulles, 3/10/53, C.D. Jackson
Papers, Box 104, “Stalin’s Death (3).”
[19] NSC, 3/11/53, FRUS, 1952-1954, 8: 1122, 1120; cf. FRUS, 1952-1954, 8: 1180, 1182.
[20] Hughes Diary, 3/11/53.
[21] NSC, 3/11/53, FRUS, 1952-1954, 8: 1122. Eisenhower was only reiterating the assurances he had already given publicly at press conferences, that he would “meet anybody, anywhere, where I thought there was the slightest chance of doing any good”; see n. 5 above.
[22] Memorandum of NSC Meeting, NSC,
3/11/53, FRUS, 1952-1954, 8: 1122-1123.
[23]
Lubell to Baruch, 3/7/53, Ann Whitman File,
AWF,
Administration Series, Box 25, “Lubell, Samuel.” Lubell later recalled to Sherman Adams that
the main goals of his proposal were “to widen whatever cleavage exists inside
the Kremlin on this issue [and] put the Soviet regime on the defensive before
its own people” for not raising living standards: Lubell to Adams, 2/1/55, WHCF, Official File,
Box 688, “137A Disarmament 1955.”
[24] Eisenhower to Baruch, 3/10/53, AWF, DDE Diaries Series, Box 3, “December 1952-July 1953 (3)”; NSC, 3/11/53, FRUS, 1952-1954, 8: 1122.
[25]
Hughes Diary, 3/17/53. Eisenhower believed that the
[26] NSC, 3/11/53, FRUS, 1952-1954, 8: 1124.
[27]
[28]
Rostow saw the reference to the wars in
[29] Hughes Diary, 3/13/53. Walter Bedell Smith revealed to Hughes one of State’s main motives for going along with the idea of a presidential speech: it would preempt Churchill, who wanted to make such a speech “to project himself as leader and shaper of policy”: Hughes Diary, 3/13/53.
[30]
Rostow, Europe After Stalin,
53; Hughes Diary, 3/15/53; Robert Matteson, “1955—A Watershed Year in the
History of
[31]
Outline, 3/14/53, Bryce Harlow Papers, Acc. 67-56, Box 15, “Chance
for Peace (4)”; The Chance for Peace,
3/16/53, John Foster Dulles Papers, Draft Presidential Speeches, Box 1,
“Chance for Peace (3).” See Ivie’s
analysis, “
[32] Hughes, Ordeal of Power, 106-107.
[33]
Matteson, “1955—A Watershed Year in the History of
[34] Hughes Diary, 3/16/53.
[35] Hughes Diary, 3/16/53; Hughes, Ordeal of Power, 106.
[36] Memorandum of Conversation, 4/16/53, John
Foster Dulles Papers, Chronological Series, Box 1, “March
1-17, 1953 (telephone calls),” published in Rostow, Europe After Stalin,p. 56. Perhaps Eisenhower was reacting to a second
letter from Lubell: Lubell to Baruch,
3/15/53, with cover letter Baruch to Eisenhower, 3/15/53, Bryce Harlow Papers,
Acc. 67-56, Box 15, “Chance for Peace (4).” Lubell advised that “a global figure of the
estimated cost of all defense and war preparations could be cited [in the
speech] along with the suggestion of how much good would result if these
expenditures of resources and energies were cut by one-fourth to one-half
immediately and still more in the future.
We could spell out in some detail the constructive things that could be
accomplished with these resources.”
Lubell went on to spell out the kind of verification plan that would
afford maximum advantage for
[37] Ambrose, Eisenhower, 96. On the Malenkov speech and the Soviet "peace offensive," see Chernus, "Meanings of Peace,” and Larres, “Eisenhower and the First Forty Days.”
[38] Hughes Memo, 3/17/53, Bryce Harlow Papers, Acc. 67-56, Box 15 “Chance for Peace (3)” (emphasis in original).
[39]
For Discussion, Bryce Harlow Papers, Acc. 67-56, O’Connor, 4/1/53, John Foster Dulles Papers,
Draft Presidential Speeches,
[40]
Eisenhower to C.D. Jackson, 3/20/53, C.D. Jackson Papers, Box 50, “Eisenhower
Correspondence 1953 (3)”; Speech Text, 3/23/53, C.D. Jackson Papers, Box 100,
“Speeches, Texts, 1953 (6).”
[41]
The Chance for Peace, 3/18/53, Bryce Harlow Papers, Acc. 67-56, Box 15,
“Chance for Peace (2)”; Hughes Diary, 3/17/53, 3/1853, 3/21/53. On March 18 Eisenhower received a letter from
Winston Churchill, who relayed the view of Marshall Tito that the
new Soviet leaders were cautious and that there might be some division among
them (see FRUS, 1952-54, 9: 2026). The
next day Eisenhower wrote to Churchill, “I am much interested in what you say
about Tito,” but he elaborated no further: Eisenhower to Churchill, 4/19/53, PDDE, 14:
112. It is certainly possible that
Eisenhower was so interested because he had decided to make a major speech in
hopes of exacerbating the divisions emerging in the Kremlin.
[42]
Hughes Diary, 4/6/53, 4/7/53, 4/10/53, 4/12/53.
At a cabinet meeting on March 27, Eisenhower asked Hughes to reinsert an
offer to meet with Soviet leaders and
[43]
Hughes diary, 4/11/53; Eisenhower to Churchill, 4/6/53, PDDE, 14: 154
and n. 1; Hughes to Eisenhower
and Milton Eisenhower, 4/11/53, Emmet J. Hughes Papers, ,
“Stalin’s Death (1).” When Dulles told
Hughes to make the questions to the Soviets at the end of the speech tougher,
the latter complied, and Eisenhower apparently made no comment on the changes: Hughes
Diary, 3/28/53.
Throughout the speechwriting process, Dulles was most concerned not
about its general tone but about its language on specific diplomatic issues,
especially the ongoing negotiations in
[44] Hughes Diary, 4/12/53, 4/15/53.
[45] Observers as disparate as Adams (Firsthand Report, 97) and Cook (The Declassified Eisenhower, 179) have agreed on this. The text is printed in PPP, 1953, 179-188.
[46] See, e.g., Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 159-160; Ambrose, Eisenhower, 96; Larson, “Crisis Prevention and The Austrian State Treaty,” 36-38. All these writers attribute the harsher passages of the speech to Dulles' influence over a more conciliatory president, following the view in Hughes’ memoir.
[47] Cook
(Declassified Eisenhower, 179, 181)
calls the speech "the opening gun of the post-Stalin phase of the Cold
War…the top side of political warfare" (the under side being covert
operations).
[48]
This has been noted by Immerman, “Trust in the Lord,” 40;
[49] Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 148. A few weeks after the “Chance” speech, a high-level Executive Committee on the Regulation of Armaments (RAC) urged that no disarmament talks should begin until the "free world" bloc had been solidified and all its boundaries securely fixed. The RAC report "recognize[d] that certain affirmative action to avoid the appearance of intransigence and rigidity may be forced on the United States,” not only by “the Soviet overtures in the disarmament field" but also by the “Chance” speech. But it held out the speech as a model for such affirmative action because its disarmament proposals were vague and noncommittal: Memorandum by the Executive Committee on Regulation of Armaments to the Executive Secretary of the NSC, 5/26/53, FRUS, 1952-1954, 2.2: 1164, 1167, 1168.
[50] The March 28 draft had humanity “nailed upon” a cross of iron.
[51] In some printed and typed versions the speech was titled “The Golden Age of Peace.”
[52] Just a week later, speaking at the same podium, Eisenhower told a Republican Women’s conference that the “Chance” speech “was not an isolated incident,” but part of an ongoing program to achieve “peace from a position of strength, security, and unity in the free world”: Remarks at the Luncheon of the Republican Women's Spring Conference, 4/24/53, PPP, 1953, 214, 216.
[53]
Lubell to Baruch, 3/15/53, Bryce Harlow Papers, Acc. 67-56,
[54] For Eisenhower's various and often contradictory uses of peace in his pre-presidential years, see GE, especially 55ff, 93ff, 205ff, 261ff, 276ff.
[55] General Eisenhower’s early post-war speeches had often described peace as substituting the conference table for the battlefield. See, e.g., GE, 94, 136.
[56] On the idea of the National Security Manager (NSM), see Barnet, The Roots of War.
[57] Special Message to Congress, 4/30/53, PPP, 1953, 226. For the same locution in the 1952 campaign, see GE, 271.
[58] Immerman, John Foster Dulles, 55.
[59]
Department of State Infoguide Bulletin
342, 4/22/53, WHCF, Confidential File, Subject Series,
60
Eisenhower to Churchill, 4/25/53, PDDE, 14: 181-182;
[61] White
to State International Press Services, Program Division Memorandum No. 5,
4/15/53, WHCF, Confidential File, Subject Series, Box 65, “Russia—Stalin’s
Death (1)”; Department of State Infoguide Bulletin 338, 4/16/53,
WHCF, Confidential File, Subject Series, Box 65, “Russia—Stalin’s Death (1).”
C. D. Jackson told his aide George Morgan that in
“merchandising” the speech they must stress that it was “not psychological
warfare”: Jackson to Morgan,
4/11/53, C.D. Jackson Papers, Box 104, “Stalin’s Death (1).” State told the
[62] It was not, however, the lead story in every newspaper. In the San Francisco Chronicle, for example, although it got a headline on page 1, it was placed beneath an even larger headline that read: “State Opens Big Drive on Prostitution.”
[63] San Francisco Chronicle, 4/17/53,
1;
[64] SLPD, 4/17/53, 1; NYT, 4/18/53, 1
[65] SLPD,
4/17/53,
1C;
NYT, 4/18/53, 8;
[66] Time , 4/27/53, 23; SLPD, 4/17/53, 2C; Life, 4/27, 40.
[67] Atlanta Constitution quoted in SLPD, 4/17/53, 1C; Washington Post, 4/17/53, p. 26; NYT, 4/119/53, IV: 1; Life , 4/27/53, 40.
[68] SLPD, 4/17/53, 1C; NYT, 4/18/53, 18. Life (4/27/53, 40) warned of the dangers of “relaxed tensions” with Kipling’s doggerel: “When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer / That is the time of peril, the time of the Truce of the Bear.” The San Francisco Chronicle (4/17/53, 16) editorialized that Eisenhower's demands called for “a massive change of heart” in the Kremlin, which was unlikely. But the demands were so obviously in the right that the speech would “goad them to some degree of progress” toward peace.
[69] NYT, 4/18/53, 1; Life, 4/27/53, 40, 35.