As European colonial rule and conservative monarchies began crumbling, America stressed its opposition to revolution and nationalist uprisings. This despite the fact that US President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles understood and sympathized with much of the new nationalism and wanted the ‘old’ colonial powers out of the way.
Ike felt that if colonial administrations remained in power, revolutionaries would move leftward in order to continue their struggle. Even so, the US was seldom able to move quickly enough in pushing the European colonial powers out.
The Revolutionary Struggle Meets ‘More Bang for the Buck’
Revolutionaries in Iran, Guatemala, and Indochina gained ground, so Eisenhower devised a package of tactics for dealing with them.
- First, Ike turned loose the CIA in places like Iran and Guatemala which were not yet out of control. You can read more about the CIA in Iran here. You can watch a video about the CIA in Guatemala here.
- Next, the President sent US advisers to train troops as in Vietnam.
- Third, Ike and Dulles engineered a series of military alliances to tie friends together in a common fight against the Soviets. (You can read about pact building here.) Examples include the Baghdad Pact in the Middle East and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).
- Finally, Ike based his overall military strategy on the use of huge hydrogen bombs as well as small tactical atomic weapons.
Growing Reliance on Nuclear
The growing reliance on nuclear bombs grew out of Ike’s determination to cut government spending. He preached repeatedly that the key to American power was its economic system and productivity, not its weapons.
While the President was determined to stop left-wing revolutions and continue Truman’s containment policy, his solution was to rely on nuclear weapons since they were cheaper than maintaining conventional forces.
Ike was prepared to consider starting a nuclear war not only if the Soviets invaded Europe but also if Cold War costs became so high that the US was forced to confront some form of dictatorial government.
Ike’s strategy became known as ‘the new look’ or ‘more bang for the buck’.
Dulles used the phrase ‘massive retaliation’ which meant being willing and able to respond vigorously at places and with means of our own choosing. But because Ike knew of the destruction that could result, he wouldn’t go to war easily.
The major problem involved the ‘gray areas’ — the newly emerging areas where kings and colonial powers were giving way to revolutionary movements. The problem here was in finding a way of successfully using US power and in understanding these movements.
Ike’s first challenges arose in Iran, Guatemala, and Vietnam. These challenges demonstrated the irrelevance of ‘massive retaliation’ and locked into place American beliefs about handling revolutionaries for the next 2o years.
Iran
In 1951 an Iranian nationalist movement headed by Mohammad Mossadegh undercut the power of the shah and proceeded to nationalize the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
By 1953, the State Department concluded that Mossadegh was moving into the Soviet orbit. Later that year the shah staged a successful coup to regain power. The US provided guns, trucks, armored cars, and radio communications for the shah’s forces. CIA intervention has been documented. You can read more here. Listen to how the CIA Overthrew Iran’s Democracy in Four Days here.
A new international oil consortium was established giving the British 40%, five American firms 40%, and the French the remaining 20%. Profits were to be equally divided between the consortium and Iran.
After the coup and the shah’s restoration, Iran’s government was securely in the Western camp.
Guatemala
Guatemala followed.
United Fruit Company property was nationalized. The State Department demanded ‘proper payment’, a demand which couldn’t or wouldn’t be met.
Guatemala received arms from Czechoslovakia, and the US responded by airlifting arms to Nicaragua and Honduras where the CIA was training Guatemalan exiles for an invasion of their homeland.
Several small planes piloted by CIA operatives bombed Guatemala City and key towns.
Ike’s overthrow of the legitimate Arbenz government marks a turning point in US foreign policy for four reasons:
- Americans misunderstood the Guatemalan situation. Arbenz had been constitutionally elected and headed a reform — not communist — movement. Americans almost always confused nationalism with communism.
- The administration pulled off a successful covert operation without problems and then mistakenly believed that such an operation could be easily repeated elsewhere.
- Arbenz fell when his military deserted him. Other Latin American revolutionaries (the Cubans and the Sandinistas) learned from this mistake and made the army and the government parts of a single unit. Overthrowing such regimes would require a war, not simply a CIA covert operation.
- The US won the battle but lost the longer war. They failed to replace the deposed regime with an effective liberal reformer.
The US poured more aid into Guatemala between 1954 and 1965 than into any other Latin American nation, but the only results by the mid 1960s were a brutal military government and the growth of a revolutionary guerilla movement more radical than any group in the country before 1954.
Vietnam
In Southeast Asia, the US was involved in a conflict between French colonial forces and the army of the nationalist communist leader Ho Chi Minh.
Between 1950 and 1954 Washington sent $1.2 billion for the French effort, and by 1954 it had paid for over 70% of the French military budget. Several hundred American technicians were also helping. Ike was concerned about getting bogged down.
The French army decided to make its major stand at Dien Bien Phu and requested US intervention. Ike bought in and outlined what was at stake by presenting his “domino theory.” The struggle was crucial, he said, because the area contained tin, tungsten, and rubber.
Ike was especially worried about the economic and political effects on Japan, the key to containment of Russia and China in the Far East.
The administration was unable to gain British support, however, and without the British, Senate and House leaders refused to support an intervention resolution.
The French garrison surrendered
Two pacts were concluded, the Geneva Accords (or Final Declaration) and the Geneva Armistice Agreement.
The parties agreed:
- that a truce would occur between Ho’s government and the French (not any southern Vietnamese government)
- on a temporary partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel with French troops withdrawing from above that line
- that North and South Vietnam wouldn’t join military alliances or allow foreign military bases on their territories
- that national elections would be held within two years to unify the country — France was to remain in the south to carry out those elections
- that regrouping of pro-communist Pathet Lao forces would be allowed in Laos, and in that country and in Cambodia general elections would be held.
The American delegation had not been a party to the negotiations on the armistice and had refused to agree formally to the accords.
Within a year, the US replaced France as the Western power in South Vietnam with military advisers, etc.
The Vietnamese were now being prepared to fight the Korean War all over again.
It was announced after the French withdrawal that elections would not be held.
More on Vietnam
Of course, we know that this was just the beginning. For more info on Vietnam read:
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Source: If you’d like more in-depth information on the time period from 1953-1955 consult America, Russia, and the Cold War 1945-1994 by Walter LaFever. Much of the information in this post is drawn from Chapter 7.
Photograph courtesy of NPR.
