Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

When we shift from the Congress to the Administration, we see that the Democratic Administration, while still pro-defense, was less so than Democratic congressmen, but that the Republican Administration, while not pro-defense, was somewhat more favorable to defense than Republican congressmen.

This situation can be explained in terms of three forces acting upon politicians: (1) the need for votes, (2) the need for campaign contributions, and (3) awareness of world conditions. On the Democratic side, public opinion, which means votes, works from the people to congressmen, while awareness of world conditions works from outside upon the Administration and through it to Congress. The lobbying of special-interest groups and the need for campaign contributions is less significant than the other two forces, but do make the Administration somewhat less pro-defense (because more pro-balanced budget) than Congress.

On the Republican side the influence of special interests is much greater simply because the Republican Party is the party of middle-class and business interests. In fact, the influence of lobbying by special interests is so great that it makes both the Republican Congress and the Republican Administration relatively immune to the need for defense, with the immunity less general in the Administration than in the Congress because the former is compelled, by its position, to pay some attention to world conditions. The Republican congressmen, on the other hand, are relatively immune both to public opinion and the pressure of world conditions, being shielded from the former by the influence of special-interest lobbyists and shielded from the latter by the Administration.

The history of the Eisenhower Administration in defense and strategic matters is largely the story of how its sincere efforts to respond to Big Business demands for balanced budgets and tax reductions were frustrated by the constant challenge of world conditions demanding an intensified defense effort. A significant element in this story is the efforts of the Administration to conceal these frustrations by the manipulation of public opinion by propaganda, especially by propaganda which tried to make it appear much more aggressive against Communism than it actually was. It really reversed Theodore Roosevelt’s dictum into “Speak roughly and carry a small stick.” The rough speaking was done by Dulles; the small stick was the Republican defense effort; when the smallness of the stick made it necessary to suspend Dulles’s bluster briefly, Eisenhower charmed the country, if not the world, with a few words of sweet reasonableness.

The characteristics of the Eisenhower Administration were set immediately after the election. His hurried visit to Korea was little more than a propaganda stunt, required by his campaign promise, and contributed little if anything to the eventual truce in Korea. En route home he had a conference with Dulles, Charles Wilson, General Bradley of JCS, and Admiral Arthur W. Radford (Commander in Chief, Pacific) on the cruiser Helena at Wake Island. There, a month before inauguration, he set the pattern of his Administration—fiscal conservatism: “A prodigal outlay of borrowed money on military equipment could in the end, by generating inflation, disastrously weaken the economy and thus defeat the purpose it was meant to serve.” Subsequently this point of view was often supported by a favorite quotation of the Radical Right—a quotation attributed to Lenin, although he never said it, that capitalist states could be destroyed by making them spend themselves bankrupt. (The Radical Right had a great love for ambiguous Lenin quotations; another favorite was, “For world communism the road to Paris lies through Peking and Calcutta.”)

Another example of the tone of the Eisenhower Administration was given on January 20, 1953. In his inaugural speech the new President announced that he was unleashing Chiang Kai-shek against Red China. Although “unleashing” was not the word used, this was the chief implication of the statement. All the implications were wrong: (a) that the Seventh Fleet was patrolling the Formosa Straits to protect Red China against Chiang, (b) that Chiang had the strength seriously to threaten China, and (c) that the previous situation reflected the “soft” sympathies of Truman’s State Department. The validity of the latter’s policy in the area was fully supported over the next eight years, as Chinese threats to Formosa again and again required American support to protect Chiang and, eventually in 1955, fear that Chiang might try to recover China by precipitating a general war between China and the United States led the Eisenhower Administration to “re-leash” him, quietly, once again.

This is very much the whole story of Dulles’s foreign policy: eventual quiet adoption of the Truman line under cover of loud verbal denunciations of it. The chief real change appeared in a slight reduction in America’s defense capabilities, especially in coping with local war by means of conventional weapons, at a time when the Soviet Union’s capabilities for waging all types of wars were increasing.

When Eisenhower came to office he found the budget already set by Truman for Fiscal Year 1954 (FY 1954) at $78.6 billion, of which $46.3 billion was military. The latter item was a slight cut from military FY 1953 of over $50 billion. On March 4, 1953, the NSC cut Eisenhower’s new FY 1954 budget by $5.1 billion. When the Joint Chiefs (JCS) protested that any cuts would seriously endanger national security, they were ignored. The chief reduction was made in the air force, from $16.8 to $11.7 billion—this at the very time when Dulles was establishing “massive retaliation.” The Truman air-force target of 143 wings by 1956 was reduced to 120 wings. An Eisenhower supporter, Admiral Arthur Radford, was made chairman of the reorganized JCS, and the defense changes were given the ambiguous name of the “New Look.” The NSC was ordered to prepare a new strategic survey, which ultimately emerged as NSC 162. The pressure they were under may be gathered from the fact that Humphrey and Dodge wanted the FY 1954 defense expenditures cut to $36 billion.

In the meantime, the new JCS, meeting on the secretary of the navy’s yacht Sequoia , in August, came up with its own suggestions: increased reliance on SAC in retaliatory power, withdrawal of some American forces from overseas positions, increased reliance upon local forces for local defense, with America’s contribution restricted to sea and air power; a strengthened reserve pool at home, and improved continental air defense. These views were incorporated in NSC 162 in October 1953, and accepted by the President on October 30th. The chief modification was abandonment of the hope that any significant future war would be fought without nuclear weapons. Shortly afterward, military expenditures were set on a “long-haul” basis at not over $34 billion for FY 1957 and subsequent years. This compares with an average of $43 billion a year over the last four Truman budgets. As a matter of fact, defense spending did decrease fairly steadily, averaging $37.4 billion over the six years 1955-1960. One consequence of this was that there was no general tax increase passed by Congress in the 1950’s after January 1951, but this expenditure represented a considerable reduction in real defense expenditures, since the six-year period, covering the Soviet missile challenge, was also a period of rising prices in which money bought less.

The “New Look,” like “massive retaliation,” was based on a series of erroneous conceptions of which two were paramount: (1) that nuclear weapons were cheaper than conventional weapons and would require less manpower and (2) that strategic weapons could deter all kinds of Communist aggression.