THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND THE COMING CLASS WAR ----Episode 27

   THE PRESIDENCY OF DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER 

Given the hypermilitarization of American life, it was only fitting that one of the nation's top military men run for president after Truman's term ended in 1952. The 1952 election pitted Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson against General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower chose anti-Communist hatchet man California Senator Richard Nixon as his running mate. During the campaign, Nixon did Ike's dirty work, denouncing "Adlai the appeaser" who "carries a Ph.D. from Dean Acheson's cowardly college of Communist containment." Senator Joseph McCarthy struck a similar theme, referring to the Democratic candidate as "Alger," a reference to Alger Hiss. McCarthy had a particular vendetta against General George Marshall, whom he blamed for "losing"China during his tenure as Truman's secretary of state. Eisenhower was set to defend his friend and mentor against such scurrilous attacks while campaigning in McCarthy's home state of Wisconsin. But Eisenhower backed off from a confrontation with the ant-Communist demagogue, pusillanimously dropping a passage defending Marshall from his speech. He was apparently aware of the fact that an astounding 185 of the 221 Republican members of the House had requested appointment to the House Un-American Activities Committee. 

The Eisenhower campaign, which had inveighed against Democratic corruption, reached its nadir in September, when it was rocked by the news that conservative businessmen had given Nixon a secret donation of $18,000. Eisenhower's advisors echoed the public in demanding Nixon's ouster. In a last-ditch effort to rescue his candidacy, Nixon delivered his famous "Checkers speech" to 55 million television viewers. 

That bit of sentimentality saved the day for Nixon. But Eisenhower let Nixon twist in the wind a bit longer. he told Nixon to meet him in West Virginia. Nixon composed a letter of resignation and barked at an aide, "What more does he want? I'm not going to crawl on my hands and knees to him." The next day Eisenhower met him at the airport and said, "Dick, you're my boy." Nixon broke down and cried. 

Eisenhower won the election handily, carrying 39 states. U.S.--Soviet relations were extremely tense when he took office in January 1953. Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, his new secretary of state, had done little to lower the temperature during the campaign, fanning the flames of anti-Sovietism with their calls to move beyond Democratic "containment" to Republican "liberation." 

But Eisenhower had not always been such an impassioned anti-Communist. He had pushed hard for opening a second front in 1942 and later developed a friendly relationship with Soviet Marshall Georgi Zhukov. After the war, he remained confident that U.S.--Soviet friendship would endure. Stalin who held him in high regard told U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman , "General Eisenhower is a very great man, not only because of his military accomplishments but because of his human, friendly, kind, and frank nature." Eisenhower visited Moscow in 1945 and received a hero's welcome from the Soviet people. Stalin accorded him the special honor of being the first foreigner to witness a parade in Red Square from atop Lenin's tomb. Later, in his farewell report as army chief of staff, he rejected the facile equation of military strength and national strength. 

During his time in office, Eisenhower would be confronted with repeated opportunities to roll back the Cold War and arms race. Presiding over the world's most powerful nation during perhaps the tensest extended period in history, he could have taken bold action that could have put the world on a different path. Signs emanating from Moscow indicated that the Kremlin might be ready to change course. But because of ideology, political calculations, the exigencies of a militarized state, and limited imagination, he repeatedly failed to seize the opportunities that emerged. And although he deserves credit for avoiding war with the Soviet Union at a time when such a war seemed quite possible, he left the world a far more dangerous place than when he first took office. 

Eisenhower didn't have to wait long for an extraordinary opportunity to reverse the course of the Cold War. On March 5, 1953, barely a month into Eisenhower's presidency, Josef Stalin died. Some of Eisenhower's close advisors urged him to take advantage of the chaotic situation in Moscow and "scare the daylights out of the enemy." The National Security Council [ NSC] called for "psychological exploitation of this event," and C.D. Jackson, Eisenhower's advisor on psychological warfare, proposed "a general political warfare offensive." But the new Soviet leaders moved quickly to ease tensions with the United States, instructing China and North Korea to compromise on an armistice agreement. On March 15, Georgi Malenkov publicly declared, "there is no dispute or unresolved question that cannot be settled peacefully." The new CIA director, Allen Dulles, reported that Soviet leaders seriously desired to "lessen the dangers of global war." They even took preliminary steps toward liberalization within the Soviet Union. Churchill, the British Tory, who had been reelected prime minister in 1951, had grown wary of the nuclear threat. He urged Washington to seize this unprecedented opportunity to end the Cold War conflict. He pressed for a summit with Soviet leaders. Eisenhower held hid tongue for six weeks while his advisors crafted a response. He finally broke his silence, offering one of the most lucid statements ever made by a U.S. president on the toll the Cold War was taking on the nation : Ike delivered his famous speech about military buildup robbing the ordinary American citizen of food, shelter, and adequate educational facilities. Specifically addressing the Cold War, Ike said  : "This is not a way of life at all. . . Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." 

BLESS DWIGHT DAVID EISENHOWER, BUT WE'LL SEE THAT HE WAS OVERRULED BY GREEDY AMERICAN INDUSTRIALISTS WHO PROFIT FROM WAR. STAY TUNED.