Having put his views on record and received widespread
praise abroad, Eisenhower saw no immediate need for another major foreign
policy statement. Now it was time to
turn back from the foreign to the domestic audience—and to change the
rhetorical tone. In the months that
followed, the president made a few more public references to his desire for
peace. But his rhetoric was again
dominated by the theme of threat that he had announced in the inaugural
address. Just two weeks after the great
peace speech, he warned Congress of the need to contain communism for an
“indefinite future.”[1]
The shift in tone reflected a fear that talk of peace
and hope might make Americans unwilling to bear the cold war burden (including
a permanently high level of military spending).[2] To prevent this, the administration undertook
a major public relations campaign—a kind of psychological warfare on the home
front, meant to support its psychological warfare abroad. The comprehensive
strategy Eisenhower hoped to implement would require both.
The domestic campaign was first stimulated by
“Armaments and American Policy,” a paper written by a high-level committee
appointed by Harry Truman and chaired by Robert Oppenheimer. The Oppenheimer Panel was stunned to learn
that "there is likely to be a point in our time when the Soviet Union will
have ‘enough’ bombs”—enough to destroy
The government would have to be free to justify its
changing policies, panel cautioned, and to disseminate whatever information it
deemed necessary to garner public support as well as to foster public
acceptance of higher taxes. Flexibility
thus required government “candor” on nuclear issues: "The American government and people are
at present very far from showing a responsible awareness of this danger, and
accordingly we believe that it is a matter of urgency that such awareness
should become much more widespread.…The present danger is not of hysteria but
of complacency."[4]
The Oppenheimer Panel completed its work just as
Truman was turning the White House over to Eisenhower. When the new NSC discussed the report,
national security advisor Robert Cutler explained that “the members of the
panel were very greatly disturbed at the public apathy and lethargy about the
atomic problem." Vannevar Bush, a
member of the Panel, seconded that view.
The NSC appointed a committee to evaluate the Oppenheimer Panel’s
report. The committee’s report recommended “an affirmative policy of candor
toward the American people,” which would “secure support of the American people
for necessary governmental actions."
Too much or too little fear might lead to too much or too little military
spending, as well as undermine public enthusiasm for cold war without end. The
The committee urged government information programs to
stress that “no physical phenomenon is inherently good or bad in itself.…The
atomic weapon differs only in degree from other weapons.…The question of
morality will relate only to the way in which this or any other weapon is
used." Public acceptance of this
view would "give us greater freedom of action with respect to all elements
of our military strength."[6] Eisenhower definitely shared this view. At a late March NSC meeting, "the
President and Secretary Dulles were in complete agreement that somehow or other
the taboos which surround the use of atomic weapons would have to be destroyed. While Secretary Dulles admitted that in the
present state of world opinion we could not use an A-bomb, we should make every
effort now to dissipate this feeling."[7]
Eisenhower was obviously treating the bomb as a very
usable weapon. When the candor idea was
discussed, he focused on preparing the public for a nuclear war: “The first requisite was to assure firm
discipline,” he told the NSC. “The
emphasis should be on vigilance and sobriety, not on panic"; the public
should “realize their own individual responsibility.” He wanted Americans voluntary to control
their own emotions—including their dislike of increased taxes: "If we are to obtain more money in
taxes, there must be a vigorous campaign to educate the people." Yet after the “Chance” speech, Eisenhower
realized, he had to be even more cautious about excessive public fear as well
as apathy. The “middle way,” which he praised so often, was more urgent but
more difficult than ever.[8]
To find this middle way, the NSC delegated C.D.
Jackson to initiate Operation Candor.
The concrete aim of Operation Candor was to create a
speech or a series of speeches for the president to deliver. Eventually, the product would be the “Atoms
for Peace” speech. But the
administration’s pursuit of candor had nothing to do with making any
disarmament or arms control proposals.
In fact, the administration had decided not to make any serious
initiatives on disarmament.[10]
The president could not publicly explain Operation
Candor and its goals, because that would risk arousing excessive fear. As he set about evoking images of long-term
peril, he also had to provide some kind of reassurance. The solution to this dilemma was to focus
again on threat and offer as an antidote, not the word peace, but the word security. The treasured goal of national security took
on greater importance and urgency precisely because it had been so radically
called into question. It afforded an
effective way to raise and mitigate fear simultaneously.
This was the dominant note of Eisenhower’s next major
address after the “Chance” speech, a nationally broadcast talk on “The National
Security and Its Costs.” This talk
breathed not a word about peace. Its
highest goal was "permanent security," which meant not the end of
threat, but only a permanent ability to fend off a continuing threat. Hoping to build support for military spending,
which would mean postponing promised tax cuts, the president argued his case in
vividly alarmist language. The U.S.
would have to “hope and work for the best, but arm and be ready for the
worst…for an indefinite period of time.…Our danger cannot be fixed or confined
to one specific instant. We live in an
age of peril.” "This phrase of not
an instant but an age of peril—I like that fine," he told its author, Emmet
Hughes.[11]
Throughout the summer, Eisenhower continued to use the
language of alarmism. The
The road to disaster that Eisenhower warned of most,
besides excessive or insufficient military spending,[13]
was isolationism. He promoted foreign
trade and aid to help allies pay their own way militarily and protect the “free
world” capitalist system against internal decay. More commonly, though, he promoted foreign
aid as the unavoidable cost of insuring that the communists stayed on their
side of the Iron Curtain. All of the
president’s speeches implied that the internal and external threats were
intermeshed facets of a single peril. As
the press reported his rhetoric, it reflected this premise by creating a
generalized notion of threat, often with no reference to particular sources of
threat, and by promoting a correspondingly generalized notion of
“security.” The New York Times, for example, ran headlines like “Eisenhower WARNS OF ‘GRAVE DANGER’ IN
FOREIGN AID CUT.” “PRESIDENT, 4 AIDES,
IN TV PANEL STRESS SECURITY OF NATION;
Brownell Cites 4-Point Plan to Protect
“Free world security” was the goal as well as the
means to the goal. It became another
expression of Eisenhower’s eschatological vision of peace, the perfect
restraint toward which his discourse and policy aspired. Like all eschatology, it led to speaking in
absolutes. “How, where, can there be
retreat from this [“free world”] unity?” he asked the Junior Chamber of
Commerce. “Surrender Asia?…Surrender
Such eschatological language suggested that security
had become a religious value. This was,
of course, just what Eisenhower wanted the public to believe, as he said
repeatedly in his speeches of mid-1953:
“We are Christian nations, deeply conscious that the foundation of all
liberty is religious faith.”[16] His faith implied a notion of salvation: “to give the nation ‘permanent security’ and
a ‘sound dollar’ in an ‘age of peril’.”
But, as he confessed to the nation's governors, his policies would lead
"not to immediate salvation and the rainbow’s end—but to progress."[17] Yet he consistently framed the threats to
national security in the apocalyptic terms of sudden and total
catastrophe. So he could offer only two
alternatives: instantaneous destruction,
or a “long haul” of apocalypse management to stave off destruction. The Wilsonian vision of total world harmony
had now receded so far beyond the horizon that it virtually disappeared. Even in speaking only of the “free world,”
Eisenhower was using the language of liberal internationalism, originally a
positive ideal of peace through economic interdependence, primarily to promote
his defensive vision of permanent security against a perpetual threat.
From late April to late July, the president seemed to
have forgotten the message of “The Chance for Peace” that peaceful negotiations
could be the surest route to security.
During a July 17 Cabinet meeting, UN Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.,
pointed out that the public saw "no real followup to the great April 16
speech," and thus no awareness that the administration was making any new
foreign policy initiatives.[18] The armistice that ended the fighting in
Eisenhower had been swept into office after implicitly
promising to end the increasingly unpopular war. In fact, he believed that (in Rosemary Foot’s
words) “additional military and political pressure rather than greater
diplomatic pliability were essential to bringing the war to a close” without making
any major concessions. What changed his
mind was not the domestic clamor for peace, but the real danger of an open
split among the major NATO powers, which might doom the great prize, the
EDC. By mid-May, Undersecretary of State
Walter Bedell Smith reported that “Western allies were being unusually blunt
and outspoken in their criticisms of
In the event, the PRC and
Once the armistice was signed, the president had to
celebrate the peace and legitimate his claim to be a peacemaker. At the same time, he had to give meaning to
the war and legitimate its death and suffering.
And he had to face the fact that, for the first time, a
The president's solution was to define the stalemate
as both peace and victory. UN forces had
“won” an armistice, he proclaimed, because they had met “the challenge of
aggression” and kept “freedom alive.”
Yet he cautioned that “we have won an armistice on a single
battleground—not peace in the world. We
may not now relax our guard nor cease our quest.” Thus he argued that the value of
In order to make his appeal persuasive, the president
relied on the “Chance” speech’s image of peace through negotiations: “The political conference which looks toward
the unification of
Press coverage of Eisenhower's speech reflected its
ambiguous message. The New York Times headline was
typical: “EISENHOWER BIDS FREE WORLD
STAY VIGILANT; PRESIDENT IS HAPPY; But Warns in Broadcast That Global Peace is
Yet to Be Achieved.” Time magazine used the headline, “I
Cannot Exult,” and subheads like “A Disquieting Fear” and “Frozen
Confusion.” Newsweek concluded its article by noting the same ambiguity in
Congress: “Everywhere on Capitol Hill,
joy was tinctured with grimness.” Journalists
were reluctant to endorse the president’s claim of victory; they rarely used
the word. But his fusion of peace and a
continuing cold war threat was everywhere in evidence.[23]
In early August, Eisenhower gave a national radio
broadcast, a sort of mid-year state of the union talk. He claimed “two precious victories" in
Korea: "We have shown, in the
winning of this truce, that the collective resolve of the free world can and
will meet aggression in Asia—or anywhere in the world. And we have won the opportunity to show that
free people can build in peace as boldly as they fight in war.” Aid to
In the president's discourse, the process of moving
the world toward peace and the process of barring communist influence were
treated as identical. He had to stress a
continuing threat in order to rally the nation for a global battle with no
foreseeable end. Yet if he admitted that
“deterring aggression” was the sum and substance of security, victory, and
peace, the public might lose its appetite for waging cold war. Thus, by the late summer of 1953, Eisenhower
found himself bound to follow two rhetorical paths that seemed to lead in quite
opposite directions, one to a hope for perfect security, the other to endless
insecurity. By the end of the year, he
would try to reconcile those two paths in one great speech, “Atoms for
Peace.” First, though, he would try to
reconcile them in his administration's private, secret policy formulation.
[1] Special Message to Congress, 4/30/53, PPP, 1953, 227.
[2] The following discussion of Operation Candor is a summary of material in Chernus, Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace, 15-52.
[3] Report by the Panels of Consultants of the Department of State to the Secretary of State, 1/53, FRUS 1952-1954, 2.2: 1067, 1068, 1071, 1076.
[4] Ibid., 1079, 1080. For Eisenhower's frequent use of the word hysteria, see GE, 94, 109-110, 233, 271,401; for the origins of his fear of complacency, see GE, 29-32.
[5] NSC, 2/25/53, FRUS 1952-1954, 2.2: 1111; Committee on Armaments and American Policy Meeting with NSC, 4/16/53, FRUS 1952-1954, 2.2: 1136; NSC 151, 5/8/53, FRUS 1952-1954, 2.2: 1152.
[6] NSC 151, 5/8/53, FRUS 1952-1954, 2.2: 1152-1154.
[7] NSC,
3/31/53, FRUS 1952-1954, 15.1: 827. This came in the context of an NSC discussion
about using atomic bombs in
[8] NSC, 5/27/53, FRUS 1952-1954, 2.2: 1172, 1173; Memorandum by the Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, 7/16/53, FRUS 1952-1954, 2.1: 397; NSC, 2/25/53, FRUS 1952-1954, 2.2: 1111.
[9] Jackson to Repplier, 6/4/53, White House Central Files, Confidential File, Subject Series, Box 12, “Candor and United Nations Speech (1)”; Washburn to Hauge, 5/20,53, C.D. Jackson Records, Box 7, “Wasburn, Abbott”; Lambie to Cutler, 7/29/53, White House Central File, Confidential File, Subject Series, Box 12, “Candor and United Nations Speech (1)”; Lambie to Gallup, et al., James Lambie Papers, Box 3, “Chron. File: May-June 1953 (1)”; Lambie to Adams, 8/5/53, White House Central File, Confidential File, Subject Series, Box 13, “Candor and United Nations Speech (13).”
[10] Policy Guidance Governing United States Activities in the United Nations Disarmament Commission for the Period May through September 1953, 5/26/53, FRUS 1952-1954, 2.2: 1163-69; Dulles to Lodge, 6/4/53, FRUS 1952-1954, 2.2: 1175. See Pruden, Conditional Partners, 145, 146.
[11] Radio Address to the American People, 5/19/53, PPP, 1953, 307-14; Hughes Diary, 5/13/53. Press reports on this speech were generally favorable and echoed the call to pay higher taxes for the military buildup; see, e.g., NYT, 5/20/53, 1; Christian Science Monitor, 5/20/53, 1. Eisenhower told legislative leaders that he wanted a “realism” that would “not scream with shrill crisis and emergency,” but would prepare sensibly to keep the nation secure in “an age of danger”: Arthur Minnich, Notes on Legislative Leaders Meeting, 5/19/53, cited in Ambrose, Eisenhower, 89. Meena Bose finds that “military sufficiency and fiscal moderation” were the key themes of Eisenhower's public discourse throughout early 1953: Shaping and Signaling Presidential Policy, 81-82.
[12]Address to Young Republicans, 6/11/53, PPP, 1953, 402; Press Conference, 4/23/53, PPP, 1953, 53-54; Special Message to Congress on the Mutual Security Program, 5/5/53, PPP, 1953, 257, 259; Radio Report to the American People, 8/6/53, PPP, 1953, 555; Address to New England “Forward to ‘54” Dinner, 9/25/53, PPP, 1953, 598, 599.
[13] On the theme of sufficient but not excessive military spending, see, e.g., Press Conference, 5/14/53, PPP 1953, 93; Television Report to the American People, 6/3/53, PPP, 1953, 364, 376; Address to National Junior Chamber of Commerce, 6/10/53, PPP 1953, 389.
[14] NYT, 7/24/53, 1; NYT, 6/4/53, 1.
[15]
Address to National Junior Chamber of Commerce, 6/10/53, PPP, 1953, 389-390;
Remarks at National Governors’ Conference, 8/4/53, PPP, 1953, 541. In one speech, Eisenhower called on educators
to build an “impregnable wall” around American minds, so that “no thought of
communism can enter”: Address at the
Inauguration of the 22nd President of the
[16]
Address to Pan-American Union, 4/12/53, PPP, 1953, 175. See also, e.g., Message to National
Conference of Christians and Jews, 7/9/53, PPP, 1953, 490; Remarks at the House
of Burgesses, 5/15/53, PPP, 1953, 297; Press Conference, 6/17/53, PPP, 1953,
440; Address at
[17] SLPD, 5/20/53, 1; Address to National Governors’ Conference, 8/4/53, PPP, 1953, 543.
[18] Hughes Diary, 7/17/53.
[19]
Foot, A Substitute for Victory, 159,
165, 172, 173; Stueck, The Korean War,
320, 324. See also Keefer, “President
Dwight D. Eisenhower and the End of the Korean War.” On Eisenhower's campaign rhetoric concerning
[20]
NSC, 5/20/53, FRUS 1952-1954, 15.1: 1064-68; Stueck, The Korean War, 321; Foot, A
Substitute for Victory, 164-65; Keefer, “End of the Korean War,”
273-79. Richard Immerman writes that
“Eisenhower decided to inform
[21]
Ambrose, Eisenhower, 107; Foot, The Wrong War, 241. Foot notes that in Eisenhower's
[22]
Radio and Television Address to the American People Announcing the Signing of
the Korean Armistice, PPP, 1953, 520-522; Zagacki, “Eisenhower and the Rhetoric
of Postwar
[23] NYT, 7/27/53, 1; Time, 8/3/53, 9; Newsweek, 8/3/53, 16.
[24] Radio Report to the American People, 8/6/53, PPP, 1953, 548-550, 552, 556.