THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND THE COMING CLASS WAR--- Episode 28

             IKE WASN'T AS KEEN ON WARS AS MANY OF 

        HIS REPUBLICAN BUSINESSMEN COHORTS 

In what seemed a dramatic departure, Eisenhower, in 1953, called for peace, disarmament, and third-world development. But in equally fundamental ways, he remained an orthodox Cold Warrior, blaming the Soviets for the troubled state of the world. 

The New York Times called Ike's "cross of iron" speech "magnificent and deeply moving." The Washington Post hoped that it signaled a rejection of Truman's "provocative words," "belligerent gesturings," "militarization of policy," and "aid . . . to everybody who would turn anti-Communist." Eisenhower, the Post felt, still needed to repudiate "the theory that a crack of the whip from Moscow produces automatic obedience in the far corners of the satellite states and throughout Red China and Communist--infected Asia. "

The Soviets reprinted Ike's "cross of iron" speech widely and offered some hopeful measures of their own. But the optimism proved short-lived. Two days after the speech, John Foster Dulles, the evil Secretary of State, dismissed Malenkov's "peace offensive" as a "peace defensive" taken in response to U.S. strength. he accused the Communists of "endlessly conspiring to overthrow from within, every genuinely free government in the world." 

Perplexed, the Soviets wondered whether Eisenhower or Dulles spoke for the administration. They applauded Eisenhower for detailing the costs of U.S. militarism but chided but chided him for leaving out the astronomical cost of accumulating a vast nuclear arsenal and constructing hundreds of military bases around the world. 

Nor did the steps taken to end the fighting in Korea necessarily augur well for future relations. Despite making progress in the negotiations, Eisenhower threatened to widen the war and considered using tactical atomic weapons, whic the United States first tested in January. At an NSC meeting in February, Eisenhower identified the Kaesong area in North Korea as a good place to use the new weapon. In May, when Army Chief of Staff General J. Lawton Collins said that he was "very skeptical about the value of using atomic weapons tactically in Korea," Eisenhower callously replied,"it might be cheaper, dollar-wise, to use atomic weapons in Korea than to continue to use conventional weapons." That month, the Joint Chiefs recommended and the NSC endorsed atomic attacks on China. Eisenhower and Dulles made sure the Communist leaders knew of those threats. 

The United States also began bombing the dams near Pyongyang, causing enormous floods and destroying the rice crop. The Nuremberg tribunal had condemned similar Nazi actions in Holland in 1944 as a war crime. Finally, in June, the two sides signed agreements settling the POW issue and agreeing on a truce demarcation line, but fighting intensified and casualties skyrocketed on both sides. The morale of the UN forces plummeted. Desertions increased. Self-inflicted wounds reached epidemic proportions. On July 7, 1953, an armistice was finally signed by North Korea, China, and the United States, two years and seventeen days after talks began. South Korea has still not signed. In August, Eisenhower kept up pressure, instructing LeMay to dispatch twenty nuclear-armed B-36 bombers to Kadena Air Base in Okinawa as part of Operation "Big Stick." LeMay invited the press to observe their arrival. 

Eisenhower used atomic bombs repeatedly throughout his presidency in the same sense, as Daniel Ellsberg has argued, that someone holding a gun to someone else's head uses the gun whether or not he pulls the trigger. Among those who learned the lesson that nuclear threats could frighten an enemy into capitulating was Richard Nixon. In 1968, Nixon explained his strategy for for dealing with North Vietnam to Bob Halderman : "I call it the madman theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, 'for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communists. We can't restrain him when he's angry ---and he has his hand on the nuclear button' --- and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace." 

Haldeman explained that Nixon "saw a parallel in the action President Eisenhower had taken . . . When Eisenhower arrived in the White House, the Korean War was stalemated. . . He secretly got word to the Chinese that he would drop nuclear bombs. . . In a few weeks, the Chinese called for a truce and the Korean War ended." 

"It worked," Nixon insisted. "It was the bomb that did it." He credited Eisenhower with teaching him the value of unpredictability. "If the adversary feels that you are unpredictable, even rash." he wrote, "he will be deterred from pressing you too far. The odds that he will fold increase greatly and the unpredictable president will win another hand." Eisenhower was certainly not a "madman," but he paid little heed to how someone like Nixon might mimic his actions. 

The Korean War had its winners and losers. Rhee's and Jiang's shaky regimes survived. Japan profited. China stood up to the Americans, enhancing its international prestige, but the Soviets had not, accelerating the Sino--Soviet split. And Churchill grasped the real meaning for the United States : "Korea does not really matter now. I'd never heard of the bloody place until I was 74. Its importance lies in the fact that it has led to the re-arming of America." 

THE BIG CASUALTY OF THE KOREAN WAR WAS AMERICAN MANHOOD. THIS IS WHERE I'LL TAKE UP PRESENTLY.