IB - Topics in 20th Century History
The New Cold War 1953-60
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final
sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed…
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000
people.
- President Dwight David Eisenhower
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Six Big Ideas Regarding the
The New Cold War:
The Transition in leadership both in The United States and the
Soviet Union in 1953 and the results of the Korean War changed
the nature of the Cold War in both countries.
As both the United States and the Soviet Union seek to develop a
stable Cold War strategy, domestic economic issues dramatically
affect how both sides wage the Cold War.
The emergence of thermonuclear weapons and the means to
deliver them change the nature of the Cold War and cause the
nature of security to be redefined.
Cold War tension and issues begin to take their toll on the societies
of all countries involved. The fear of the “Garrison State” greatly
influences United States policy.
Germany is an example of how temporary solutions could become
permanent because of Cold War tensions.
Third World leaders discovered that they could use Cold War
tensions to advance their own situation.
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IB Topics in 20th Century History
The New Cold War 1953-1960
By the time Truman left office and Stalin died, early in 1953, the basic patterns of the Cold War were firmly
established. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would accept the other's vision of a postwar world, even
as neither would risk war - at least not intentionally - to achieve their own. Both sought allies but did not always
control them; both built nuclear weapons but found it difficult to know what to do with them. Neither proved
capable of separating foreign policy from domestic influences, but those influences differed enormously, producing
correspondingly dissimilar behavior. Certain that history was on their side, the first generation of Cold War
statesman proceeded from strikingly divergent views of history itself and where it was taking them.
One common destination, they would have been surprised to learn, was to be three and a half additional
decades of confrontation. The issues over which Soviet-American conflict had arisen at the end of World War II
were still unresolved, for the most part, in the mid-1980s: indeed their very irresolution had become, by then, so
familiar a feature of international life as to seem to some observers reassuringly normal. Cold War history is, at
least in part, the story of how what was thought to be unendurable became endurable; how order and stability, if
rarely justice, evolved from bitter sustained rivalry.1
1) The Cost of the Cold War
a)
The Economic cost to the United States
Pres. Eisenhower & Sec. of State Dulles
Another problem was the unproductive nature of military expenditures in
peacetime. The roots of communism, (John Foster) Dulles liked to argue,
were not material in nature: “there are passions that cannot be …
suppressed by foreign guns.” Moreover, such spending diverted valuable
resources from domestic priorities, as Eisenhower pointed out with
unusual eloquence in April 1953:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are
not fed those who are cold and are not clothed.
….
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school
in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000
population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
…But the most important reason for perceiving means as limited was the belief that unrestrained spending could alter the
very nature of American society, either through the debilitating effects of inflation or through regimentation in the form
of economic controls. … It was based on the assumption that economic stability and military strength were inseparable,
that if “these two are allowed to proceed in disregard for the other, you then create a situation either of doubtful military
strength, or of such precarious economic strength that your military position is in constant jeopardy.”…Dulles put it
more bluntly: “If economic stability goes down the drain, everything goes down the drain.” 2
b) The Economic cost to the Soviet Union
The “theoretical” basis of Khrushchev’s departure from Stalin’s legacy in 1955-1956 was his rejection of the “inevitability of
global war”and of the violent revolutionary transition of the world from capitalist to Socialist order. He adopted a broad
interpretation of Lenin’s doctrine of “peaceful coexistence” between the opposite social systems -- capitalism and socialism.
These innovations, as always with Khrushchev, were linked to his personal experience with the awesome power of thermonuclear
weapons and to his realization of the impossibility of war between the nuclear superpowers. The innovations marked a
fundamental shift from the thinking of Stalin and Molotov, who saw the Cold War as a prelude to another world war among great
powers, to a view of the Cold War as a transitory period between the era of imperialist wars and an era of peaceful economic
1
2
John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Oxford University Press, 1997. Page 113
John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Oxford University Press, 1982. Page133-134
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competition between the two social systems. The future, in Khrushchev’s opinion, would be cold peace perhaps, but hardly Cold
War.3
c)
Domestic Implications of the Cold War
i) The Societal Implication of preparing for Nuclear War
As terrible as atomic warfare would undoubtedly be, a prolonged period of preparation for it might be almost as bad in
the March 1947 issue of the journal Air Affairs, author Lewis Mumford sketched out a series of scenarios intended to
illuminate the “social effects of atomic war.” In the first three, war breaks out after increasing periods of time have elapsed
and the number o atomic weapons (and the number of countries possessing them) has grown. The results are predictably
grim, culminating in the third case in fatalities and genetic and environmental damage sufficient to annihilate the human race.
In Mumford’s forth scenario, “atomic war does not break out at all,” but it remains “for at least a century … a growing
threat.” Various trends are now “carried to their logical conclusions.” Populations are forceably scattered or driven
underground. “Taxes continue to rise to a point that nullifies financial success.” Eventually, “all the earlier advocates of free
enterprise become eager for state ownership and flock into government, where power and privilege are now concentrated.”
Vast sectors of the economy are nationalized and “the Constitution of every country is altered, where necessary, so as to give
complete control to the military caste.” All forms of expression are brought under “centralized control.” Research,
development, and education at all levels are geared to meeting the needs of “atomic warfare and its accessory arts.”
Perpetual fear of annihilation leads to “purposeless sexual promiscuity … narcotic indulgence,” and outbreaks of paranoia,
claustrophobia, and sadistic violence. While “not a single life has been lost in atomic warfare,” by the scenario’s end,
civilization has, nevertheless, been “fatally destroyed.” 4
ii) The “Garrison State”
… Over time, (political scientist Harold) Lasswell feared, there would be a general, evolutionary movement “towards a world
of ‘garrison states.’”
In these strange and terrible new political organisms, authority would be “dictatorial, governmentalized, centralized,
integrated.” With the state under constant threat, all power would flow to the “specialists on violence,” the soldiers, the
security policeman, and their civilian
assistants. The principal preoccupations
of the ruling elite would be maintaining
morale over domestic order (through the
use of terror, propaganda, and mindaltering drugs) and managing the
economy so as to generate the maximum
military capabilities.5
iii) America’s answer to the fear of the
Garrison State (Eisenhower and the
Dangers of the Garrison State – The
Military Industrial Complex – Page
24)
Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and its Cold
War Grand Strategy. Page 70
The power-creating mechanism put
in place during the first fifteen years of the Cold War can best be understood as the product of a collision between these two
sets of conflicting forces. It is impossible to explain the mechanism of power creation, the military strategy that they were
intended to support, or, more generally, the impact of the Cold War on American society and the American economy without
reference to the persistent presence of domestic forces tending to oppose expansions in state power.
Domestic constraints appear also to have contributed to the Cold War’s eventual outcome. By preventing some of the
worst, most stifling excesses of statism, these countervailing tendencies made it easier for the United States to preserve its
economic vitality and technological dynamism, to maintain domestic political support for a protracted strategic competition
and to stay the course in that competition better than its supremely statist rival. 6
2) The New Cold War – Eisenhower
a)
The Election of Eisenhower and the “New Look”
Vladislav Zubok & Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Harvard University Press, 1996. Page 184-185
Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and its Cold War Grand Strategy. Princeton University Press. Pages 55-56
Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and its Cold War Grand Strategy. Page 57
6
Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and its Cold War Grand Strategy. Page 4
3
4
5
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i)
The Election of 1952
(1) Political Considerations
The general’s reasons for allowing his name to be placed before the 1952 Republican national convention had more to do
with his determination to keep the nomination out of the hands of Robert A. Taft, whom Eisenhower regarded as an
isolationist; his concern over Truman’s domestic programs, which he thought were leading to socialism; and his belief
that survival of the two-party system required an end to twenty years of Democratic rule. 7
(2) Economic Consideration
ii) The Emergence of the "New Look"
(1) The Solarium Task Force (16 July 1953)
(a) Deterrence
(b) Containment
(c) Liberation
(2) Dulles and "Massive Retaliation" (January 12, 1954)
(a) The Economics of War
(b) New Weapons
(c) Propaganda
(3) NSC 162/2 (12 January 1954)
(a) How to Use Nuclear Weapons
(b) The Strategy of the New Look
(i) Massive Retaliation
(ii) Alliances
(iii) Psychological Warfare
(iv) Covert Action
Robert A. Taft
… Then, too, the new administration’s emphasis
on making containment work more efficiently at less cost tended to place a premium on covert action activities
which were, after all, relatively inexpensive. Finally, Eisenhower chose as his new CIA director Allen W.
Dulles, the Secretary of State’s brother, thereby virtually guaranteeing a closer coordination of intelligence
operations with national strategy than had occurred heretofore. …
… Some indication of where and how these activities were carried on have also surfaced: it is known, for
example, that during this period the CIA organized the overthrow of two foreign governments (Iran in 1953,
Guatemala in 1954), attempted unsuccessfully to overthrow two others (Indonesia in 1958, Cuba in 1960-61),
infiltrated refugees into Eastern Europe to try to provoke disorders there, conducted guerilla and paramilitary
operation against Communist China and North Vietnam from Burma and Laos, organized aerial reconnaissance
missions over the Soviet Union and Communist China, and at least considered assassination plots against
several foreign leaders (Chou En-lai, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, and Rafael Trujillo). The agency also
engaged in certain covert domestic activities, including mail and telecommunications surveillance, the
infiltration of student, academic, journalistic, and cultural organizations, and financial subsidies to publishers
and foundations.8
(v) Implications
… What is clear, though, is that the administration gave the CIA an extraordinarily broad mandate, that it was
willing to lie if necessary to maintain cover, and that it did not consider such departures from conventional
standards of official conduct inappropriate, given the circumstances. “I have come to the conclusion that some
of our traditional ideas of international sportsmanship are scarcely applicable in the morass in which the world
now flounders,” the President wrote privately in 1955. “Truth, honor, justice, consideration for others, liberty
for all – the problem is how to preserve them, nurture them and keep the peace – if this last is possible – when
we are opposed by people who scorn … these values. I believe we can do it, but we must not confuse these
values with mere procedures, even though these last may have at one time held almost the status of moral
concepts.”9
(4) Eisenhower and the "New Look" (12 January 1954) – Asymmetry vs. Symmetry
7
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page127
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page 158
9
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page159
8
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It is reasonable to ask, then, just what the administration’s
John Foster Dulles
strategy was on the use of nuclear weapons, and how it differed
from the recommendations put forward in NSC-68. The
answer revolves largely around the question of symmetrical
versus asymmetrical response. The Truman
administration, of course, had emphasized symmetry:
deterrence would work by creating certainty in the mind of the
adversary both as to the inevitability and the limits of an
American response – the United States would counter, but not
exceed, the initial provocation. The Eisenhower
administration, embraced asymmetry, sought to combine the
certainty of a response with the uncertainty as to its nature.
The idea was to open up a range of possible responses so wide
that the adversary would not be able to counter or retain the
initiative; lacking that, it was thought, he would come to see
the risks of aggression as outweighing the benefits. All of this
had to be done at tolerable cost, though; hence the attraction of
threats to use nuclear weapons. As a top-secret statement of
“Basic National Security Policy” put it early in 1955: “So long
as the Soviets are uncertain of their ability to neutralize the U.S. nuclear-air retaliatory power, there is little reason to
expect them to initiate general war or actions which they believe would … endanger the regime and the security of the
USSR.”10
(5) Dulles "Policy for Security and Peace" Foreign Affairs (April 1954)
(a) Massive Retaliation
(b) Brinkmanship
(6) The Criticisms of the “New Look”
… The prevailing judgment in intellectual and political circles by 1960 was that the “New Look” had failed, because it
had: (1) relied excessively on nuclear weapons as the primary instrument of deterrence, thereby narrowing the range of
feasible response to aggression; (2) failed to deter revolutions in the Third World; (3) allowed a “missile gap” to
develop, thus undermining the strategic balance with the Soviet Union; and (4) neglected opportunities for negotiations
with its adversaries. These became the central elements in the Democratic party’s critique of Eisenhower in 1960; they
also provide a convenient framework within which to reconsider both the imperfections and accomplishments of the
“New Look.” 11
3) The New Cold War – The Transition
of Authority in the Soviet Union and
the Partition of Germany
Inside the Tomb of Lenin & Stalin
a) The Death of Stalin (5 March 1953)
b) The Struggle for Power, The Four Wise Men:
Georgi Malenko, Lavrenty Beria, Nikolai
Bulganin & Nikita Khrushchev
i) The State – USSR Council of Ministers
ii) The Party – Party Presidium
c)
Beria & Malenkov
… It seems that Beria grossly underestimated the
importance of the Party Secretariat and expected that
with the mechanism of terror in his hands and a weak Malenkov in the position of head of state, he would have an ideal platform
for a future power struggle. In the biggest mistake of his life, he misjudged the abilities of Nikita Khrushchev, then just a dark
horse in new leadership.12
d) Germany
10
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page 151
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page 165
12
Vladislav Zubok & Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev. Page 155
11
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i)
The “Alliance Security Dilemma
There are a variety of factors that can explain the influence of a smaller ally on a great power, the influence of the
Kremlin’s ally on Soviet policy and on conditions in the GDR. As in any relationship between an empire’s core and its
periphery, the geographic distance yields significant control over local conditions to the local power. This can create a gap
between the superpower’s policy preferences and the actual local implementation of policy. The capacity of the local power
to affect local conditions, and the implementation or nonimplementation of the superpower’s declared policies, give it the
capacity to constrain these policies. In spite of all the Soviet troops and advisors in the GDR, Moscow was still not able
always to enforce its policies and prevent the East Germans from acting independently. The roughly 500,000 Soviet troops
in the GDR may have deterred the population from repeating the uprising of 1953, but they were not able to control the
actions of the East German leaders. The Soviet forces could determine or protect the ultimate “fate” of the socialist regime in
the GDR but could not regulate its daily “behavior.” Thus, through its impact on day-to-day local conditions, the smaller ally
may limit the superpower’s real long-term policy options.
Strategic location is central to the influence of an ally. If the country is located, for example, at the border between two
military alliances, as was the case with the GDR, this gives the superpower a great stake in protecting and strengthening the
ally, because the ally is a critical part of the superpower’s buffer zone. The ally is of course perfectly well aware of this
situation and may be able to use it to its own advantage. It can do this by persuading the superpower that the local ally needs
certain things like increased economic and military aid (or a border closure) if it is going to be able to maintain its position as
a bulwark against the other bloc. Thus, while the ally is clearly dependent on the superpower for its protection in its
vulnerable location on the edge of the bloc, the superpower also fees some dependence on the ally to preserve this position as
bulwark or buffer.13
ii) Walter Ulbricht – Socialist Unity
Party (SED)
iii) The Options for a resolution of
the German question:
Walter Ulbricht
(1) One Side Wins
(2) A Politically Neutral Germany
(3) The Partition of Germany
iv) The German Crisis, 16-17 June 1953
v) The Fall of Beria
Beria’s downfall meanwhile ensured Ulbricht’s survival: he was now able to move against his own potential opponent with
impunity. The East German leader may have planned it all this way. But he certainly wrecked what little was left of Beria’s
German initiative; and the resulting disorder gave Beria’s rivals in the Kremlin the excuse they needed to move against him.
Having done so, it would have been difficult for any of them - at least as long as the succession struggle was under way – to
oppose Ulbricht, since that would have suggested association with rebellion and treason. The culture of distrust Stalin had
left behind now linked his heirs to an East German leader Stalin himself had never trusted. 14
13
14
Hope M. Harrison, Driving the Soviets Up the Wall: Soviet – East German Relations, 1953 – 1961. Princeton University Press. 2003. Pages 4-5.
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 131
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e)
f)
vi) The German Democratic Republic (GDR)
The Emergence of Khrushchev
i) The failure of the “Elites”
ii) Khrushchev and the Consolidation of Power
The Division of Europe
i) The Schuman Plan
Acheson’s ideas where shunted aside when Schuman momentously proposed that the coal and steel industries of France and
Germany be placed under supranational authority. Schuman would limit France’s sovereignty as well as Germany’s in order
to achieve a common market, joint modernization and export programs, standardization of freight rates, and equalization of
working and living conditions. Other European nations could
join if they desired. Schuman was vague on particulars, but he
Nikita Khrushchev
shrewdly assessed domestic, European, and international
economic and political realities. He sought to break the
European integration impasse, co-op German power, and place
France in the forefront of European diplomacy before lifting
restraints on Germany’s sovereignty narrowed France’s
options.15
ii) Federal German Republic (FGR) joins NATO, May 1955
iii) The Warsaw Treaty Organization, May 1955
g) German Asymmetry
One important asymmetry had to do with material capabilities;
as Eisenhower’s National Security Council pointed out in 1953,
West Germany had “nearly three times the population, about five
times the industrial output, and almost twice the size” of East
Germany. …
Another asymmetry was political in character. The West Germans had chosen and, on the whole, were satisfied with their
government; neither was true in East Germany. …
Finally there was a military asymmetry. Despite the fact that West German rearmament was now proceeding within NATO
alliance, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies retained an overwhelming conventional force advantage, with all the risks of
psychological intimidation – to say nothing of actual invasion – this entailed.16
4) Negotiations
a)
Arms Reduction
i) The Soviet Proposal (10 May 1955)
ii) The US Position
(1) The Arms Race
…Most American officials evidently preferred the risk of an unconstrained arms race to any conceivable agreement that
could be reached with the USSR. They were particularly skeptical that a disarmament accord could be adequately
verified, and they believed, in any case, that U.S. security would
U-2
be better served by an arms buildup.17
(2) Public Relations
… According to a paper prepared for the National Security
Council, U.S. disarmament policy through the mid-1950s was
formulated primarily for its effect on “public relations” without
taking into account the possibility that the USSR might actually
accept the West’s proposal.18
b) The Geneva Summit (July 1955)
i) Open Skies
15
Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Stanford University Press. 1992. Page 348.
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 137
Matthew Evangelista, “Cooperation Theory and Disarmament Negotiations in the 1950s.” World Politics. 42 (June 1990). Page 516
18
Matthew Evangelista, “Cooperation Theory and Disarmament Negotiations in the 1950s. Page 517
16
17
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ii) The U-2 Incident
iii) The Soviet Military Cuts
5) De-Stalinization – The Secret Party Speech to the 20th Party Congress (February 25, 1956)
and its results: Hungary (October – November 1956)
a) The Secret Party Speech, February 25, 1956 (Page 20)
b) The Hungarian Uprising – Imre Nagy (28 October 1956)
c) The Implication for Empire – Contrasting the Empire by Invitation to the Empire of Force
That, though, was the painful point: Khrushchev had to be ruthless to hold his alliance together. He had hoped to make
Marxism-Leninism attractive enough that Stalinist methods would not be needed to ensure its unity; but even the briefest
experiment with de-Stalinization had set off centrifugal tendencies in Eastern Europe that ended in a bloodbath. “He was a kind
man in normal human relationships,” Fedor Burlatsky, one of his advisers, later recalled,
But in politics he did not recognize kindness,
especially when it seems to him that “class
interests” had been infringed. Still smoldering in
his heart were the ashes of the Stalin he himself
Cold War Europe
Imre Nagy
had cast down. He executed Nagy as a lesson to
all other leaders in socialist countries, thinking as
he did so of Gomulka and Kadar, and perhaps
also of Tito and Mao. In his eyes political
expediency was superior to morality. Humanity
came second to security.
“You need to give your people the right orientation,” Khrushchev lectured
demoralized Hungarian communists after it was all over. “You need to tell them that
this [Nagy’s movement] was a counterrevolution. If it was not, then how could we
have used weapons?” It is indeed Khrushchev’s voice but Stalin’s logic: “if they had
not been enemies of the people, how could we have shot them?”
The Warsaw Pact survived, as did Khrushchev, although narrowly. But after
1956 no one could maintain the illusion that it was an Eastern European NATO: an
alliance based on voluntary participation and democratic methods of operation.
Despite Khrushchev’s reforms, the asymmetry of imposition versus invitation
remained. As a consequence; the Soviet Union could never count upon the loyalty of
its European “allies:” it would have to watch them just as carefully as it did those of
the United States. Little had really changed, then, since Stalin’s day: the great ghost
was not so easily exorcised after all.19
6) The Emergence of the ICBM
a) The Soviet ICBM – Sergei Korolyov (3 August 1957)
b) Sputnik (4 October 1957)
i) The Perception of the Soviet Union
19
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 211
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Sputnik
… The authors of a profile of the Soviet leader prepared for John Kennedy were correct when they wrote that
Khrushchev hoped his missiles would force the West to treat the USSR with respect, promote Soviet national security and the
world revolution, “and even perhaps [help] assure universal peace (Soviet style) through disarmament.” The nuclear
missiles, even before they were deployed, gave Khrushchev a pretext to start implementing his program of moving to the
“highest” stage in the construction of communism in the USSR – a pipe dream of the scion of the Russian Revolution. …
Thus the thermonuclear revolution did shape Khrushchev’s thinking and lead him to transform Soviet Cold War policies
in several important ways. The Soviet leader began to look at the Cold War as first and foremost a nuclear stalemate between
the two superpowers. And though he came to the conclusion that a war between them could not be fought and won, he
quickly tried to turn the sword of nuclear deterrence – and even blackmail – on the country that (he believed) had practiced it
first, the United States. That became the weapon with which Khrushchev sought to obtain Washington’s recognition of the
USSR as an equal global power.20
ii) The Effect on the United States
All hell did break loose. Sputnik was a sharp slap
to American pride, but worse, it suggested Soviet
technical and military parity with the West, which in
turn undermined the assumptions on which free world
defense was based. To those in the know, the limited
importance of the Soviet satellite and the true
proportions of military might were clear. But to
Eisenhower’s opponents, ranging from hawkish
senators to civil rights activists, critics of Republican
economics to pushers of federal aid to education,
Sputnik was an opportunity to sell their programs as
cures to the presumed ailments of American life that
contributed to the ‘loss’ of the space race. From
October 1957 to the end of his term, Eisenhower was
under siege, and with him the public values he
championed. Thus Sputnik was the greatest defeat Eisenhower could have suffered, and it wiped out much of the five years’
efforts to meet the Cold War challenge without America, in his view, ceasing to be America. 21
iii) The Missile Gap
(1) The Bluff
For it was all a bluff. At the very time Khrushchev boasted of the obsolescence of American “massive retaliation,” the
U.S. deterrent was at the height of its effectiveness and the USSR had yet to deploy a single ICBM. 22
(2) The end of the gap
The first satellite sparked the missile gap; the first reconnaissance satellites snuffed it out. (Newspaper columnist)
Joseph Alsop, previously a noisy patron of the “gap,” broke the news on September 25, 1961: new intelligence revealed
that something less than fifty Soviet missiles existed. In October Deputy Secretary Gilpatric admitted that the United
States would have more missiles even after absorbing a surprise attack than the USSR had available for a first strike. In
November the New York Times made it official. The United States had already some 233 missiles capable of reaching
Soviet territory to some fifty or less Soviet ones able to reach the United States: “The ‘missile gap,’ like the ‘bomber
gap’ before, is now being consigned to the limbo of synthetic issues, where it has always belonged.” 23
7) The Cold War in the Third World
a)
An Overview
i) Economics (The Developed World, The Developing World, & The Undeveloped World)
ii) Imperialism and the Asymmetrical Nature of the Third World
iii) The Appeal of Communism
Vladislav Zubok & Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev Page 193
Walter A. McDougall, …The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985. Page 132
Walter A. McDougall, …The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. Page 250.
23
Walter A. McDougall, …The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age. Page 229.
20
21
22
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America found this prospect [losing the Cold War via the third world] all the more painful because democratic values
seemed likely here to undermine rather than reinforce Western interests. In Europe, Wilsonian principles of selfdetermination and market capitalism had complemented the balancing of power: idealism and realism worked well together
because the alternative Soviet model had little beyond oppression to offer. But in much of the rest of the world, the West
itself had been the oppressor, whether through formal or informal means of exploitation. Paths to liberation and livelihood
could quite plausibly appear to lie through Moscow and, after 1949, Beijing. The Kremlin was planning to use China, the
newly formed Central Intelligence Agency warned, “as an advanced base to facilitate Soviet penetration of Southeast Asia,
including Indonesia and the Philippines; the outflanking of India-Pakistan and the strategically important areas of the Middle
and Near East; and eventually control of the entire Asiatic continent and the Western Pacific.” The threat Americans thought
they had warded of in Europe and Japan – Moscow’s capability to transform misery into power – seemed only to have shifted
to a wider arena. And this time Washington’s allies, as former and remaining colonists, were facilitating that process. 24
iv) The Third World and the “New Look”
A second major criticism of the Eisenhower administration was that it had failed to deal successfully with the revolutionary
movements that were becoming an increasingly prominent feature of life in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America.
These movements had arisen as European colonialism had declined (and in Latin America, as resentment over the alleged
neo-colonialism of the United States had grown); despite their predictability, even inevitability, Washington officials more
often than not seemed woefully unprepared for them. “[I]t is we, the American people, who should be marching at the head
of this world-wide revolution, counseling it, helping it come to a healthy fruition,” Senator John F. Kennedy charged, in what
became a conspicuous theme of his 1960 campaign. “Yet we have allowed the Communists to evict us from our rightful
estate … We have been made to appear as the defenders of the status quo, while the Communists have portrayed themselves
as the vanguard force, pointing the way to a better, brighter, and braver order of life.” United Nations’ Ambassador Henry
Cabot Lodge made the same point quietly within the councils of the administration: “the U.S. can win wars,” he told the
cabinet in November 1959, “but the question is can we win revolutions?” 25
v) The Ego of the Superpowers and the power of the "third worlders"
Antagonists in that conflict tended to calculate victories in term of failures, retreats, and humiliations inflicted upon their
opposites. Symbolic triumphs often exceeded the value of the territories in which they occurred; in another pattern familiar
from the history of empires, the game itself was what counted, rather than whatever it was the game was supposed to
accomplish. Reputation emerged as a vital interest, with credibility the standard against which to measure it. This situation
gave power to those who were supposed to have been on the receiving end of power: the "third worlders" themselves, who
learned to manipulate the Americans and the Russians by laying on the flattery, pledging solidarity, feigning indifference,
The Middle East
24
25
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 152-153
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page176
- 11 -
threatening defection, or even raising the specter of their own collapse and the disastrous results that might flow from it.26
b) Middle East
i)
Iran – Prime Minister Muhammad
Mosaddeq – Operation Ajax (20 August
1953) – Shah Muhammad Reza Puhlavi
Muhammad Mossaddeq
Shah of Iran
In August 1953, riots and fighting
between soldiers on the streets of Tehran
ended the Iranian government headed by
Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq.
The imperial government of the shah –
Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi – took
the place of Dr. Masaddeq’s
administration. It is possible to interpret
this event as having been in the interests
of the United States in a number of
ways. Dr. Mosaddeq had been one of
the first nationalist leaders to threaten
the wholesale nationalization of
“colonialist” oil installations. The coup
not only prevented this, but also gave
Gulf, Standard of New Jersey, Texaco, and Socony- Mobil a 40 percent share of Iranian oil rights. This benefits the
individual American corporations, but also, depending on the historian’s particular perspective, served any one or
combination of the following national goals: it protected the flow of oil to the American economy in general; furthered
an oil-for-coal fuel substitution that undermined the power of Communist-led Western European miners’ unions; broke
the British oil monopoly in Iran; destroyed the potential menace of an oil-enhanced power bloc based on the Moslem
faith and extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean; diminished the Moslem threat to the fledgling state of Israel;
and ended the danger of the Soviet encroachment on the oil-rich gulf and the Indian Ocean.
According to CIA mythology, a team of just five Agency officers, equipped with a one-million-dollar slush fund in
five-hundred-rial ($7.50) notes, organized the coup from a Tehran basement. Kermit (“Kim”) Roosevelt oversaw the
operation which included the hiring of weightlifters as muscle-men and the organization of paid street mobs. … 27
ii) Egypt
(1) Nasser – Ant-Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Cold War
America’s handling of the cold war, Nasser concluded, helped the
USSR penetrate countries that only accepted its aid to win
independence; western flexibility could avoid this problem. He
cautioned against confusing Arab and African Nationalist
movements with communism. He complained that America saw
freedom from foreign domination as “the inalienable right of
every man, yet balk at supporting these nations foe fear of
annoying some colonial Power that has refused to move with the
times,” a view similar to that of liberal State Department
analysts.28
(2) The Founding of Israel (May 1948)
Further complicating the American position was the peculiar mix
of humanitarian compassion, domestic political expediency and
personal stubbornness that led President Truman – against strong
advice from his diplomatic and military advisers – to support a
Jewish homeland in Palestine. This course of action the State
Department Policy Planning Staff insisted, “would be construed
by the Arabs as a virtual declaration of war against the Arab
26
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 154
Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA & American Democracy. 2nd Ed., Yale University Press, 1998. Page 89-90.
28
Barry Rubin, “America and the Egyptian Revolution, 1950-1957.” Political Science Quarterly. 97/1 (Spring 1982). Page 81
27
- 12 -
Nasser
world.” When Truman went ahead and recognized the new state of Israel anyway in May 1948, many Washington
officials feared that the decision would hand the Russians an enormous advantage. Not only threaten “some of our most
vital interests in the Middle East and the Mediterranean,” Kennan argued; it could also disrupt the unity of the western
world and … undermine our entire policy toward the Soviet Union.” The United States now carried the burden of the
association with Zionism as well as colonialism. 29
(3) The Cold War and the Middle East
… A youthful but assertive Nasser explained to John Foster Dulles in May 1953, that the Soviets “had never occupied
our territory … but the British have been here for seventy years. How can I go to my people and tell them I am
disregarding a killer with a pistol sixty miles from me at the Suez Canal to worry about somebody who is holding a knife
a thousand miles away?”30
(4) The Suez Crisis
(a) The Conflict with Israel and Arms
(b) Egyptian / Soviet Arms Deal (September 1955)
(c) The Aswan Dam and the American Cutoff (16 July 1956)
(d) The Nationalization of the Suez Canal (26 July 1956)
(5) British, French and Israeli Intervention (29 July 1956)
(a) The Western Alliance
(b) Soviet Response
Intercepted cables from foreign embassies in Moscow and other information soon convinced the Kremlin that the
Americans had not been informed of the aggression in advance. In the United Nations, John F. Dulles strongly
condemned the United States’ closest allies. Khrushchev immediately came up with a bold scheme: he persuaded
the Presidium to send official letters to the aggressors, threatening them with Soviet military retaliation. Under the
circumstances, retaliation could only mean a nuclear strike. Simultaneously, against the doubts of the baffled
Molotov, Khrushchev made the
HoChi Minh
Presidium approve a decision to
suggest to the United States that
they send a joint peace-keeping
mission to the Middle East. The
Eisenhower administration hastily
rejected the offer, but this episode
aggravated even further the bad
feelings between Washington and
its allies.31
(6) The Eisenhower Doctrine (5
January 1957)
(7) Dulles and US Middle
East Policy
Ngo Dinh Diem
But because the Secretary
of State believed in filling
all power vacuums – even
those left, in the Middle
East, by the despised
British and French – he
allowed the United States
to inherit the enmities
imperial powers normally
attract when they seek too heavy-handedly to project their
influence. Determined to force a Cold War frame of reference on a region more concerned with resisting imperialism
than containing communism, Dulles deadened his own sensitivities to nationalism, thereby opening opportunities for the
Soviet Union, which would retain a significant presence in Egypt for the next decade and a half and elsewhere in the
29
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 164
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 168
31
Vladislav Zubok & Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev Page 190-191
30
- 13 -
Middle East for another decade and a half after that. Because of his tendency to fret, hover, and meddle – his inability to
see when things were going well and need not be re-engineered – Dulles transformed his own country into the new
imperial power of the Middle East in what he knew to be a post-imperial age.32
c)
Vietnam
i) The Partition of Vietnam and United States Interests in Southeast Asia
In the wake of the temporary partition of Vietnam at the Geneva Conference of 1954, the Eisenhower administration was
determined to do what it could to ensure that southern Vietnam remained out of Communist hands. The National Security
Council (NSC) provided the initial guide on 20 August 1954, when it approved a policy statement for Southeast Asia (NSC
5429/2). According to the NSC, past U.S. support for France in Indochina meant that the recent French reverses there had
damaged American prestige and raised “doubts in Asia concerning U.S. leadership and the ability of the U.S. to check further
expansion of Communism in Asia.” It was imperative, the council declared, that the United States “protect its position and
restore its prestige in the Far East by a new initiative in Southeast Asia, where the situation must be stabilized as soon as
possible to prevent further losses to Communism through (1) creeping expansion and subversion, or (2) overt aggression.”
One critical component of this initiative would be the creation in September of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization,
which allowed the president to fashion a military response to communist attacks in the region. Specifically within South
Vietnam, NSC 5429/2 indicated that the United States would seek to strengthen South Vietnam’s military forces, improve its
economic condition, and promote democratic reforms, and would do so by cooperating with the French “only insofar as
necessary.”33
ii) The Failure of United States Policy in Vietnam
The U. S. strategy of containment failed in Vietnam partly because there was no self-sustaining state in the South for the
United States to support. From its inception in 1954, South Vietnam was largely a political vacuum into which the United
States became deeply drawn in a futile attempt to fill the void. American involvement helped sustain the Diem regime, but it
handicapped the Saigon government in its competition with the Communists for National legitimacy. Eisenhower’s foreign
policy may have been astute on some areas, as the revisionists argue, but in Vietnam, as one of the most recent and judicious
revisionist studies acknowledges, the administration oversimplified and overcommitted. The United States fostered
dependence, not independence, in South Vietnam. In the early 1960s, the Diem façade became increasingly untenable as
internal Vietnamese opposition to him and his family mounted. His assassination in 1963 led to a series of short-lived
successor regimes that further exposed the frailty of South Vietnam’s autonomy. There was no viable government in Saigon,
and by the mid-1960s on, no U.S. military force could maintain the fiction that there was. 34
32
Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. Page 176
L. Anderson, “J. Lawton Collins, John Foster Dulles, and the Eisenhower Administration’s ‘Point of No Return’ in Vietnam,” Diplomatic History. 12 (Spring 1988).
Page 129
34
L. Anderson, “J. Lawton Collins, John Foster Dulles, and the Eisenhower Administration’s ‘Point of No Return’ in Vietnam,” Page 146-147
33
- 14 -
d) Latin America
Latin America
i)
Guatemala
(1) US Policy in policy in Guatemala
… Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said that “military force should not be used aggressively to achieve national
goals.” Yet during his tenure at Foggy Bottom, American planes and American advisers helped secure the overthrow of
a popularly elected president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. Arbenz, for his part, claimed to view American policy as the
cat’s paw of corporate greed and attributed a large share of his nation’s problems to the United Fruit Company (UFC),
maintaining that communism posed no threat to his people and that American aid to rebel leader Carlos Castillo Armas
constituted unwarranted interference in the domestic affairs of another country. … 35
(2) The Influence of the United Fruit Company (UFCO)
Behind the bananas looms the United Fruit Company, with its platoon of “influential lobbyists and talented publicists.”
In Washington, a Republican president heads a probusiness administration whose upper echelon is studded with fiends of
United Fruit. Foster Dulles had been a senior partner in the law firm that represented UFCO. His deputy, Walter Bedell
Smith, was toying with the idea of taking a job with UFCO (which he indeed did when he retired in 1955). The assistant
secretary for Latin America was a Cabot, as was the ambassador to the United Nations – and the Cabots were major
UFCO stockholders. Eisenhower’s personal secretary, Ann Whitman, was the wife of UFCO’s director of public
relations.36
(3) The Implication of US action
Eisenhower’s overthrow of Arbenz marks a turning point in U.S. foreign policy for at least four reasons. First,
Americans misunderstood the Guatemalan situation. Arbenz had been constitutionally elected and headed a reform – not
communist – movement. A handful of communists sat in the national legislature and influenced the labor movement, but
no one ever argued that they in any way shaped the country’s most important institutions: the presidency, the army, and
the Roman Catholic Church. Americans too easily confused nationalism with communism. Second, despite the
confusion, the administration pulled off such a successful and covert operation that Dulles could deny that his brother
Allen (director of the CIA) was involved with Arbenz’s removal. … Americans too quickly and mistakenly concluded
that such an operation could easily be repeated elsewhere. Third, Arbenz finally fell when his military deserted. Future
35
36
Fredrick W. Marks III, “The CIA and Castillo Armas in Guatemala, 1954: New Clues to an Old Puzzle,” Diplomatic History. 14/1 (Winter 1990). Page 67
Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954. Princeton University Press, 1991. Page 361.
- 15 -
Latin American revolutionaries drew the appropriate lesson. Fidel Castro of Cuba and, in the 1980s, the Sandinista
government of Nicaragua would make the army and the government part of a single unit. Overthrowing such regimes
would require a war, not simply a covert CIA operation. Finally, the United States won the battle but lost the longer
war. In Guatemala (and latter elsewhere) Americans failed to replace the deposed regime with an effective liberal
reformer. Castillo Armas carried out large-scale executions that killed more Guatemalans after the invasion than had
died during the conflict. Reactionary and ineffective, he was assassinated by members of his own regime three years
later. The United States 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
guerrilla movement more radical than any group in the country before 1954.37
ii) Cuba
(1) Fidel Castro v. President Fulgencio
Batista (1 January 1959)
iii) Ernesto “Che” Guevara
e)
Fulgencio Batista
Fidel Castro
The Failure of the “New Look” in the Third
World
Much of the administration’s difficulty in dealing with
communism in the Third World stemmed from the
chronic failure to distinguish deterrable from nondeterrable phenomena. The theory of deterrence
implies that the behavior to be deterred (1) represents
something less than a total commitment on the part of
the adversary, and (2) is under reliable central
direction. Neither of these conditions could be
assumed in the Third World. It is all very well to
Ernesto “Che” Guevara
threaten nuclear retaliation against the Chinese, whose
determination to prolong the fighting in Korea was not
strong but whose control over the forces involved
there was; to apply the same tactic in Indochina,
where the insurgents were totally committed but not
susceptible to outside control, was something else
again. A North Atlantic Treaty Organization could
well have deterred a Soviet attack in Europe if one
had ever been planned; there was no assurance that the
alliances patterned on that precedent would
discourage autonomous but potentially hostile
revolutions in the arc of non-communist states running
from Turkey to South Korea. A Formosa Resolution
might carry weight with Peking on the issue of
Quemoy and Matsu; to attempt, through an
Eisenhower Doctrine, to deter something as vague as
“communism” in an area as amorphous as “the Middle East” was a wholly different proposition. Covert action might work with
deceptive smoothness to stage palace coups in Iran and Guatemala; its use as a means of sparking broad popular uprisings against
entrenched nationalist regimes such as those of Sukarno in Indonesia or Castro in Cuba was another matter entirely. The
administration, in short, can be said to have been a victim of its own successes, and of its inability to see beyond them: it was not
sufficiently sensitive to the possibility that what worked in one context might not in a wholly different one.38
8) The Post-Revisionist view of the “New Look”
Contrary to current revisionist claims, then, Eisenhower was something less than a “genius.” He achieved his goal of greater
deterrence at less cost, but only through too casual a willingness to use nuclear weapons in limited war situations, an unnecessary
confusion over what, in the Third World, he was trying to deter, a failure to follow through on his own commitment to negotiations,
and, it must be added, a fair amount of plain good luck. Still, his strategy was coherent, bearing the signs of his influence at almost
every level, careful, for the most part, in its relations of ends to means, and, on the whole, more consistent with than detrimental to the
37
38
Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1996. 8th Ed. McGraw Hill, 1997. Page 159
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page180-181
- 16 -
national interest. It is a modest claim, but nonetheless a more favorable one than one can reasonably make about either the strategy
that proceeded, or the one that followed, the “New Look.” 39
39
Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Page 197
- 17 -
The Foreign Policies Dwight David Eisenhower
Dwight David Eisenhower
Republican
Elected in 1952 and Re-elected in 1956
Vice President Richard Millhouse Nixon
First Republican President since 1932
Economics
Conservative Republic
Balanced Budget & Limited Government Spending
Cold War Polices
The New Look
Massive Retaliation / Brinkmanship
Sec. of State & Key Officials
John Foster Dulles – Sectary of State
Allen Dulles – CIA Director
Cold War Crises
East Germany / Hungary / Suez
U-2, China
Other Key Issues
Garrison State
- 18 -
IB Topics in 20th Century History
Log Requirements & Reading assignments
The New Cold War 1953-1960
Required Reading:
1. John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know. Chapter 5 (Sections Intro through VI, pages 113 – 135) – Due December 3rd
2. John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know. Chapter 7 (Sections Intro through V, pages 189 – 211) – Due December 8th
3. Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War. Chapter 8 East and West of the Suez – Due December 15th
4. Aaron Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State. Introduction, Chapters 1 though 3 (4 logs) – Due January 5th
Possible Paper #2 Questions:
Topic 5: The Cold War
1. In what ways and for what reasons did the Cold War affect the Middle East?
2. “A different kind of Cold War.” To what extent is this a valid statement about the Cold War after 1953?
3. To what extent was Germany the cause of East/West disagreement between 1943-1960?
Possible Paper #3 Questions:
1. In what ways, and to what extent, did Eisenhower’s foreign
policy demonstrate the limits of American power in the
1950s?
2. Assess the foreign policy of one United States President
between 1945 and 1985.
3. Analyze the reasons for the United States intervention in
Guatemala in 1954.
Log Requirements:
For each log entry you must complete all of the following that are
applicable
1. Complete citation (author, title, publication information, & date
of publication)
2. Type of writing / Audience for the writing
3. Major Thesis
4. Supporting information
5. Specific quotes that illuminate the author’s argument
6. Strengths and limitations of the source
7. Your response to the reading (how has the reading effected your understanding of the subject)
Rubric:
A = All logs deal with all applicable issues in a thoughtful manner, No missing entries.
B+ = Most logs deal with all applicable issues in a thoughtful manner, few logs do not deal with all issues, No missing entries.
B = Some logs deal with all applicable issues in a thoughtful manner, many logs do not deal with all issues, No missing entries.
C+ = Missing entries, All logs deal with all applicable issues in a thoughtful manner.
C = Missing entries, Most logs deal with all applicable issues in a thoughtful manner, few logs do not deal with all issues.
D+ = Missing entries, Some logs deal with all applicable issues in a thoughtful manner, many logs do not deal with all issues.
D = Majority of entries are missing.
F = No Log.
- 19 -
Khrushchev’s Secret Speech at the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU
February 24-25 1956
Comrades! ... quite a lot has been said about the cult of the individual and about its harmful consequences. After Stalin’s death the Central Committee
began to implement a policy of explaining concisely and consistently that it is impermissible and foreign to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism to elevate
one person, to transform him into a superman possessing supernatural characteristics akin to those of a god. ..
Such a belief about a man, and specifically about Stalin was cultivated among us for many years.
The objective of the present report is not a thorough evaluation of Stalin’s life and activity. Concerning Stalin’s merits an entirely sufficient number
of books, pamphlets and studies has already been written ... [Khrushchev then reports the positions of Marx, Engels and Lenin in relation to
collective leadership, the role of the party and the working class, etc, and introduces the delegates to the documents relating to Lenin’s Testament, in
which he warns against Stalin, concluding with a reading of a letter from Lenin to Stalin] “... I ask therefore that you weigh carefully whether you are
agreeable to retracting your words and apologising or whether you prefer the severance of relations between us.” Lenin, 5 March 1923.
Comrades! I will not comment on these documents. They speak for themselves. Since Stalin could behave in this way during Lenin’s lifetime ... we
can easily imagine how Stalin treated other people. ...
When we analyse the practice of Stalin in regard to the direction of the party and of the country, when we pause to consider everything which Stalin
perpetrated, we must be convinced that Lenin’s fears were justified. The negative characteristics of Stalin, which, in Lenin’s time were only incipient,
transformed themselves during the last years into a grave abuse of power by Stalin, which caused untold harm to our party.
We have to consider seriously and analyse correctly this matter in order that we may preclude any possibility of a repetition ...
We must affirm that the party fought a serious fight against the Trotskyites, the Rightists, and bourgeois nationalists, and that it disarmed
ideologically all the enemies of Leninism. This ideological fight was carried on successfully, as a result of which the party became strengthened and
tempered. Here Stalin played a positive role. ...
This was a stubborn and a difficult fight but a necessary one, because the political line of both the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc and of the Bukharinites
led actually toward the restoration of capitalism and capitulation to the world bourgeoisie. ...
But some years later, when socialism in our country was fundamentally constructed, when the exploiting classes were generally liquidated, when the
Soviet social structure had radically changed, when the social basis for political movements and groups hostile to the party had violently contracted,
when the ideological opponents of the party had long since been defeated politically - then the repression directed against them began. ...
We must assert that, in regard to those persons who in their time had opposed the party line, there were often no sufficiently serious reasons for their
physical annihilation. The formula “enemy of the people” was specifically introduced for the purpose of physically annihilating such individuals. ...
Had Leninist principles been observed ... we certainly would not have had such a brutal violation of revolutionary legality and many thousands of
people would not have fallen victim to the method of terror. ... [Khrushchev recalls the incident of Kamenev and Zinoviev’s betrayal of the
Revolution in October 1917, and their subsequent reinstatement to the leadership] ...
As facts prove, Stalin, using his unlimited power, allowed himself many abuses, acting in the name of the Central Committee, not asking for the
opinion of the Committee members nor even the members of the Politburo, or even inform them ...
During Lenin’s lifetime, party Congresses were convened regularly; ... It should be sufficient to mention that during all the years of the Great
Patriotic War, not a single Central Committee plenum took place ...
A party commission was [recently] charged with investigating what made possible the mass repressions against the majority of the Central
Committee members and candidates elected at the Seventeenth Congress ... many party activists who were branded in 1937-38 as “enemies” were
actually never enemies. spies, wreckers, etc but were always honest communists ... and often, no longer able to bear barbaric tortures, they charged
themselves with all kinds of grave and unlikely crimes.
...of the 139 members and candidates of the party’s Central Committee who were elected at the Seventeenth Congress, 98 persons, i.e., 70 per cent,
were arrested and shot!! [consternation in the hall] What was the composition of the delegates? 80 per cent joined the party during the years of
illegality before the Revolution and during the Civil War before 1921. By social origin the basic mass of the delegates were workers (60 per cent of
the voting members).
For this reason, it is inconceivable that a congress so composed would have elected a Central Committee a majority of whom would prove to be
enemies of the people ...
The same fate met not only the Central Committee members but also the majority of the delegates to the Seventeenth Congress. Of 1,966 delegates,
1,108 persons were arrested ... This very fact shows how absurd, wild and contrary to common sense were the charges of counter-revolutionary
crimes ... [indignation in the hall]
... repression increased after the congress... after the complete liquidation of the Trotskyites, Zinovievites and Bukharinites, when as a result of that
fight the party achieved unity, Stalin ceased to an even greater degree to consider members of the Central Committee or Politburo.
- 20 -
After the criminal murder of S M Kirov, mass repressions and brutal acts of violation of socialist legality began. ... the circumstances surrounding
Kirov’s murder hide many things which are inexplicable and mysterious ...top functionaries of the NKVD were shot presumably to cover up ...
Mass repressions grew tremendously from the end of 1936 ... the mass repressions at this time were made under the slogan of a fight against the
Trotskyites ... but ... Trotskyism was completely disarmed ... it was clear that there was no basis for mass terror in the country.
This terror was actually directed not at the remnants of the exploiting classes but against the honest workers. ...
Using Stalin’s formulation, namely, that the closer we are to Socialism the more enemies we will have ... the number of arrests based on charges of
counter-revolutionary crimes grew 10 times between 1936 and 1937. ... Confessions of guilt were gained with the help of cruel and inhuman tortures
... when they retracted their confessions before the military tribunal [no one was told] ...
[Khrushchev cites at length the testimony of Eikhe, a member since 1905, tortured and shot in February 1940, and details the cases other well-known
veterans denounced by Stalin, to consternation in the hall]
Not long ago we called to the Central Committee Presidium and interrogated the investigative judge Rodos ... he is a vile person with the brain of a
bird and morally completely degenerate. And it was this man who was deciding the fate of prominent party workers ... he told us: “I was told that
[they] were people’s enemies and for this reason, I, as an investigative judge, had to make them confess that they are enemies”. He could do this only
through long tortures, which he did, receiving detailed instructions from Beria ... he cynically declared: “I thought that I was executing the orders of
the Party”. ...
[Khrushchev moves on to talk of Stalin role in the War].
... Stalin put forward the thesis that the tragedy which our nation experienced in the first part of the war was the result of the “unexpected” attack of
the Germans against the Soviet Union. But, comrades, this is completely untrue. As soon as Hitler came to power in Germany he assigned to himself
the task of liquidating Communism. The fascists were saying this openly; they did not hide their plans. ...
Churchill personally warned Stalin [and] ... stressed this repeatedly in his despatches of 18 April and in the following days.
However, Stalin took no notice of these warnings. ..
information of this sort .. was coming from our own military and diplomatic sources ... [Stalin ordered that] no preparatory defensive work should be
undertaken at the borders, that the Germans were not to be given any pretext ... when the fascist armies actually invaded Soviet territory and military
operations had begun, Stalin issued the order that the German fire was not to be returned. Why? It was because Stalin, despite evident facts, thought
that the war had not yet started, ...
Very grievous consequences, followed Stalin’s annihilation of many military commanders and political workers during 1937-41 because of his
suspiciousness and through slanderous accusations ...; during this time the cadre of leaders who had gained military experience in Spain and the Far
East was almost completely liquidated ... large scale repression against the military cadres led also to undermined military discipline,...
after the first severe disaster and defeats at the front, Stalin thought that this was the end. In one of his speeches he said: “All that which Lenin
created we have lost forever”. After this Stalin for a long time did not direct the military operations and ceased to do anything whatever. ...
when he returned to active leadership ... the nervousness and hysteria which Stalin demonstrated, interfering with actual military operations, caused
our Army serious damage. ... during the whole Patriotic War, he never visited any section of the front or any liberated city ...
[laughter begins to break out in the hall from time to time as Khrushchev ridicules Stalin’s exaggeration of his role, after the war, and he concludes
...] Not Stalin, but the Party as a whole, the Soviet government, our heroic army, its talented leaders and brave soldiers, the whole Soviet nation these are the ones who assured the victory in the Great Patriotic War! [tempestuous and prolonged applause, which breaks out repeatedly as
Khrushchev continues this theme].
All the more monstrous are the acts whose initiator was Stalin .. we refer to the mass deportations from their native places, of whole nations .. not
dictated by any military considerations .. the Ukrainians avoided this fate only because there were too many of them and there was no place to deport
them [laughter]
... The Party came out of the war even more united .. [Khrushchev then tells of the “Leningrad affair” in which eminent military leaders were
denounced and shot]. Stalin became even more capricious, irritable and brutal; in particular his suspicion grew. His persecution mania reached
unbelievable dimensions ... this unbelievable suspicion was cleverly taken advantage of by the abject provocateur and vile enemy, Beria [explaining
how Beria denounced Voroshilov and others. He then tells of the fictitious “Georgian plot”].
The “Yugoslavian affair” contained no problems which could not have been solved through party discussions among comrades ... it was completely
possible to have prevented the rupture of relations with that country ... mistakes and shortcomings were magnified in a monstrous manner by Stalin,
which resulted in a break of relations with a friendly country [Stalin thought he could destroy Tito, but] Tito had behind him a state and a people who
had gone through a sever school of fighting for liberty and independence, a people which gave support to its leaders. ...
We have found a proper solution ... liquidation of the abnormal relationship with Yugoslavia was done in the interest of the whole camp of Socialism,
in the interest of strengthening peace in the whole world.
- 21 -
[Khrushchev then deals with the “affair of the doctor-plotters”] Present at this Congress as a delegate is the former Minister of State Security,
Comrade Ignatiev. Stalin told him curtly, “If you do not obtain confessions from the doctors we will shorten you by a head”. [tumult in the hall] ...
the methods were simple - beat, beat and, once again, beat.
When we examined this “case” after Stalin’s death, we found it to be fabricated from beginning to end.
[Khrushchev then delivers a prolonged attack on the role of Beria]. Beria was unmasked by the Party’s Central Committee shortly after Stalin’s
death. As a result of particularly detailed legal proceedings, it was established that Beria had committed monstrous crimes and Beria was shot.
[Khrushchev then explains how Stalin personally edited the biographies and histories lauding his role to ensure that his own role was presented in
terms of the most extreme glorification, receiving applause as he suggests that Stalin’s name be removed from the national anthem, which should
praise instead the role of the party, and loud, prolonged applause follows. As Khrushchev turns to the theme of how Stalin elevated himself above
Lenin, even in the period of the Revolution, and denounced Stalin for this, he is greeted by repeated bursts of applause].
Comrades! The cult of the individual has caused the employment of faulty principles in party work and in economic activity; ... our nation gave birth
to many flatterers and specialists in false optimism and deceit ... many workers began to work uncertainly, showed over-cautiousness, feared all that
was new, feared their own shadows and began to show less initiative in their work ... a routine manner ... bureaucratising the whole apparatus. ...
All those who interested themselves even a little in the national situation saw the difficulties in agriculture, but Stalin never even noted it. Did we tell
Stalin about this? Yes, we told him, but he did not support us. Why? ...He knew the country and agriculture only from films ... which so pictured
kolkhoz life that the tables were bending from the weight of turkeys and geese ... The last time he visited a village was in January 1928 ... facts and
figures did not interest him ... the fantastic ideas of a person divorced from reality.
We are currently beginning slowly to work our way out of a difficult agricultural situation ... We are certain that the commitments of the new FiveYear Plan will be accomplished successfully.
[prolonged applause]
Comrades! If we sharply criticise today the cult of the individual which was so widespread during Stalin’s life, and if we speak about so many
negative phenomena generated by this cult which is so alien to the spirit of Marxism-Leninism, various persons may ask: How could it be? Stalin
headed the party and the country for 30 years and many victories were gained during his lifetime. Can we deny that? ...
The Socialist Revolution was attained by the working class and by the poor peasantry with the partial support of middle-class peasants. It was
attained by the people under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party. Lenin’s great service consisted in the fact that he created a militant party of the
working class, but he was armed with Marxist understanding of the laws of social development and with the science of proletarian victory in the fight
with capitalism, and he steeled this party in the crucible of revolutionary struggle of the masses of the people. ...
Our historical victories were attained thanks to the organisational work of the party, ...and to the self-sacrificing work of our great nation.
... during the last years of Stalin’s life he became a serious obstacle ... During Stalin’s leadership our peaceful relations with other nations were often
threatened, ... In recent years we managed to free ourselves of the harmful practice of the cult of the individual ...
Some comrades may ask us: Where were the members of the Politburo? Why did they not assert themselves against the cult of the individual in time?
And why is this being done only now? ...
Initially many of them backed Stalin actively because Stalin was one of the strongest Marxists and his logic, his strength and his will greatly
influenced the cadres and party work. ...
At that time Stalin gained great popularity, sympathy and support. The party had to fight those who attempted to lead the country away from the
correct Leninist path; it had to fight Trotskyites, Zinovievites, and Rightists, and Bourgeois Nationalists. This fight was indispensable.
Later, however, Stalin, abusing his power more and more, began to fight eminent party leaders and to use terroristic methods against honest Soviet
people. ...
Bulganin once said: “It has happened sometimes that a man goes to Stalin on his invitation as a friend. And, when he sits with Stalin, he does not
know where he will be sent next - home or jail”.
It is clear that such conditions put every member of the Political Bureau in a very difficult situation. ...
... had Stalin remained at the helm for another few months, Comrades Molotov and Mikoyan would probably not have delivered any speeches at this
Congress. Stalin had plans to finish off the old members of the Political Bureau. ...
We consider that Stalin was excessively extolled. However, in the past, Stalin doubtless performed great services to the party, to the working class
and to the international workers’ movement....
Stalin was convinced that [these things he did] were necessary .. He saw this from the position of the interest of the working class, of the interest of
the laboring people, of the interests of the victory of Socialism and Communism. We cannot say that these were the deeds of a giddy despot. ... In this
lies the whole tragedy!
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[Khrushchev then suggests that Stalin’s name, and also those of other leaders be removed from towns etc bearing their names, but] this should be
done calmly and slowly. ... if we begin to remove the signs everywhere and to change names, people will think that these comrades in whose honour
the given enterprises, kolkhozes or cities are named have met some bad fate and that they have also been arrested. ...
We should in all seriousness consider the question of the cult of the individual. We cannot let this matter get out of the party, especially not to the
press. It is for this reason that we are considering it here at a closed Congress session. We should know the limits; we should not give ammunition to
the enemy; we should not wash our dirty linen before their eyes. I think that the delegates to the Congress will understand and assess properly all
these proposals.
[tumultuous applause, which escalates as Khrushchev winds up ...]
We are absolutely certain that our party, armed with the historical resolutions of the Twentieth Congress, will lead the Soviet people along the
Leninist path to new successes, to new victories.
Long live the victorious banner of our Party - Leninism!
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Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961
Public Papers of the Presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960, p. 1035- 1040
My fellow Americans:
Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn
ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.
This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace
and prosperity for all.
Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better
shape the future of the Nation.
My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West
Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past
eight years.
In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere
partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling,
on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.
II.
We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own
country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud
of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and
military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.
III.
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and
to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any
failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.
Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our
very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger
is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis,
but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with
liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.
Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some
spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense;
development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other
possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance
between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the
comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance
between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds
imbalance and frustration.
The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to
them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.
IV.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor
may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World
War II or Korea.
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Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as
required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a
permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense
establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic,
political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this
development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of
our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert
and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and
goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent
decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for,
by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same
fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of
research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old
blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is
gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy
could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system
-- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
V.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must
avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the
material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all
generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
VI.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community
of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are
by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the
battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but
with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a
definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could
utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace
is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private
citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
VII.
So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and
peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
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You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever
unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to
enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy
responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made
to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of
mutual respect and love.
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