THE AMERICAN EMPIRE AND THE COMING CLASS WAR ---- Episode 30

IKE'S IN OFFICE AND THE ARMS RACE IS UNDERWAY 

The New York Times took "comfort in the fact that"the United States still possessed a lead in atomic and hydrogen bomb production but recognized that "these advantages are bound to diminish with time." The Times noted that even Secretary of State Dulles had declared that "the central problem now is to save the human race from extinction." 

Dulles and his relatives had helped design the American Empire. John Foster Dulles's maternal grandfather, John W. Foster, and his uncle Robert lansing had both served as secretary of state. John W. painstakingly tutored his eldest grandson throughout his childhood, instilling a firm belief in the United States' global role. John Foster Dulles's paternal grandfather and his father had both been Presbyterian ministers, his grandfather serving as a missionary in India. His younger brother, Allen, became Director of the CIA. When his uncle Lansing served as Wilson's secretary of state during and after the First World War, Dulles was secretary-treasurer of the government's new Russian Bureau, whose main function was to assist anti-Bolshevik forces challenging the Russian Revolution. Financier Bernard Baruch, an old family friend, next tapped the young lawyer to serve as legal advisor to the U.S. delegation to the Inter-Allied Reparations Commission at Versailles, after which he returned to practice law at Sullivan and Cromwell, overseeing the accounts of some of the pillars of the emerging empire : J.P. Morgan & Company ; Brown Brothers Harriman ; Dillon, Read ; Goldman Sachs ; United Fruit Company ; International Nickel Company ; United Railways of Central America ; and the Overseas Securities Corporation. 

Though journalistic accounts of Dulles's unabashed affection for Hitler in the early years of the Nazi dictatorship are hard to verify, there is no doubt that he maintained some involvement in German business activities. He participated actively in the vast interwar cartelization, which afforded a means to stabilize the shaky U.S. economy, reduce competition, and guarantee profits. Dulles dealt extensively with I.G. Farben through the nickel and chemical cartels. Despite his later vehement denials of any dealings with the Nazi regime, he is known to have visited Berlin in 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939. In assessing Dulles's involvement, award-winning New York Times and Boston Globe foreign correspondent Steven Kinzer, citing Nancy Lisagor and Frank Lipsius's "exhaustive study" of Sullivan and Cromwell, writes that "the firm 'thrived on its cartels and collusion with the new Nazi regime', and Dulles spent much of 1934 'publicly supporting Hitler', leaving his partners 'shocked that he could so easily disregard law and international treaties to justify Nazi repression'." 

Dulles never wavered in his commitment to maintaining U.S.hegemony and protecting U.S. business interests orin his hatred of communism. Despite outward appearances, the rigid, sometimes belligerent secretary of state and the affable president differed little on substantive policy issues. Eisenhower understood that even with income tax rates topping 90 percent for the wealthiest Americans, the nation's bloated military budget would prove impossible to sustain, ultimately bankrupting the country.  He worried, "This country can choke itself to death piling up military expenditures." He decided to curb ballooning defense spending by relying on nuclear arms, which were cheaper than maintaining a large standing army. In late October 1953, he approved a new Basic National Security Policy, NSC 162/2, the core of his "New Look" defense policy, which stated, "in the event of hostilities, the United States will consider nuclear weapons to be as available for use as other munitions." Based on the assumption that any war with the Soviet Union would quickly evolve into a full-scale nuclear war, the New Look downplayed conventional military capabilities and relied upon massive nuclear retaliation by the fortified Strategic Air Command. Thus the savings made by reducing the size of the army were offset, in large part, by increased spending on the air force and navy. EISENHOWER ENDED UP CUTTING TRUMAN'S 1954 DEFENSE BUDGET FROM $41.3 BILLION TO $36 BILLION. 

BUT EVERYBODY WAS ALL THAT KEEN ON USING NUCLEAR WEAPONS. MORE ON THIS TO COME.