Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy since 1938

Chapters 7, 8, and 9 address the developments in American foreign policy and international relations in the 1950s. They discuss the first major international “hot” conflict of the Cold War—the Korean War (1950-1953). This war signaled the extension of containment into Asia. The authors focus on the complex relationships between the United States, North and South Korea, the Soviet Union, and China. They also examine how the 1949 Revolution in China changed the dynamics in Asia. As with previous sections, personalities play a key role. Ambrose and Brinkley focus on President Eisenhower—and his experience in the Second World War—CIA director Allen Dulles, and General MacArthur’s insubordination in Korea. Finally, the book examines America’s global engagement in different parts of the world: Central Europe (Hungary), North Africa (Egypt’s Suez Canal), and the Caribbean (Cuba) in America’s so-called backyard.

At first, Korea was an issue where the Soviet Union and the United States cooperated despite ideological differences, each aiding the north and the south, respectively. However, their efforts failed. When the North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel in 1950, Korea became the grounds for an international crisis. Truman avoided using American ground troops but sough to win against the North Koreans. At the same time, the president did not want to exacerbate the conflict with the USSR: “The underlying assumption of Truman’s approach to the war was that Communist aggression in Asia could be stopped at a fairly low cost in lives” (117).

However, Truman ended up using those American troops that were stationed in that country since the 1945 occupation in Korea. The president sought to lift the so-called Iron Curtain in Asia. At the same time, General MacArthur’s goal, as the commander of the American forces, was to reunify Korea. Ultimately, Truman along with the State and Defense departments, decided to completely “liberate” rather than contain Korea.

The developments from the American side led to a series of warnings from the Chinese, since the conflict was taking place on their borders. China had a successful Communist Revolution in 1949, and was now led by Mao Zedong. That country had international backing from the Soviet Union, such as its boycott of the United Nations Security Council for failing to give Chiang Kai-shek’s seat to Mao. In the context of the Korean war, Truman even proposed dropping an atomic bomb on China.

At the same time, the American actions, led by MacArthur, near the city of Vladivostok in the Russian Far East, deeply concerned the Soviet side: “Fighting Chinese forces in Korea was one thing, war with Russia another. The Americans were willing to try to liberate Pyongyang, but they were not ready to liberate Moscow” (120).

The authors show that MacArthur’s behavior could have led to a serious escalation. Ultimately, Truman pulled the General out of Korea for insubordination in order to keep the war “limited.” The conflict ended inconclusively in 1953 through President Dwight Eisenhower’s armistice that returned to the status quo.

Eisenhower became president that year. The general trajectory of his military policy “rested on America’s capacity to destroy the Soviet Union” (131). However, the president was pragmatic and also believed that “the cost of being able to intervene anywhere, immediately, was unbearable” (132).

In contrast, the “unshakeable beliefs” of Allen Dulles, the CIA Director, were “based on American ideas” that the Cold War is “an irreconcilable conflict” (129). He was more hawkish in his approach and believed that the “Soviets planned to overextend the Free World and then destroy it with one blow” (132). For Dulles, large-scale retaliation was to be the main tool of the containment policy. Ambrose and Brinkley believe that Dulles interpreted the world in a narrow way solely in the context of the Cold War and made decisions strictly through this prism.

It was also at this time that the roots of the Vietnam War appeared: “Eisenhower continually urged the French to state unequivocally that they would give complete independence to Vietnam upon the conclusion of hostilities” (134). The French received American aid but “had no intention of giving up Vietnam” (135). In 1954, the French in South Vietnam and the leader Ho Chi Minh in the North agreed to a truce and a temporary partition of the country along the 17th parallel. Americans, especially Dulles, sought to “unilaterally shore up the government of South Vietnam” (139) by aiding the leader Ngo Dinh Diem directly and bypassing the French. As a result, the US administration “tried to promote South Vietnam as a model for Third World development” (140). Ultimately, however, this policy failed because “neither brinksmanship nor moral persuasion had freed a single slave or prevented North Vietnam from going Communist” (149).

At the same time, Eisenhower provided airplanes to Chiang Kai-shek—now the leader of Taiwan—in 1953 to bomb mainland China. This aid was delivered in the context of the control of the Formosa Strait separating Taiwan and China. The Chinese response of bombarding Quemoy and Matsu led Eisenhower to weigh the option of nuclear bombing of China:

Eisenhower, however, began to doubt that the operation could be limited in time or scope, and he rejected preventive war. He pointed out to reporters that even if successful, such a war would leave China utterly devastated, full of human misery on an unprecedented scale (143).

The question of nuclear weapons also arose in the context of the Soviet Union. The latter improved the delivery capability and size of their bombs forcing Americans to consider a summit in the mid-1950s: “Eisenhower’s willingness to go to the summit meant the end of any American dreams of winning the Cold War by military means” (143).

At this time, the Soviet Union also began providing economic aid to the so-called Third World. Dulles believed that this geographic area was “a battleground on which Russia had great advantage” (147). Dulles sought to challenge the USSR with money and “American willingness to accept radicalism in the emerging nations” (147), which he did not have.

Overall, Ambrose and Brinkley qualify American foreign policy between 1956 and 1961 as a combination of success and failure. Its success lies in Eisenhower’s ability to avoid. In contrast, some perceived its failures in America’s inability to contain the Soviet Union, including the “spectacular Soviet successes in rocketry, beginning with Sputnik” (151). The authors consider Eisenhower “a man of moderation and caution with a clear view of what it would cost the United States to resist Communist advances everywhere” (152).

The second half of the 1950s was fraught with crises in different parts of the world, starting with Egypt’s Aswan Dam. Dulles withdrew his support for this project, which led to pushing Egypt, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, closer to the Soviet Union. Dulles was mainly concerned with the US oil interests in the Middle East. This decision also precipitated the 1956 Suez Crisis in which Israel, Britain, and France challenged Egypt and lost. However, there were limits to the cooperation with the Soviet Union.

This period was also important because of the change in power in the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev led the country after Stalin’s death in 1953. In 1956, he gave a secret speech denouncing Stalin for being too despotic. However, this internal transformation did not change the overall trajectory of the Soviet foreign policy, and the 1956 Hungarian rebellion was put down. The United States did not intervene: “The Hungarians, and the other Eastern European peoples, learned that they would have to make the best deal they could with the Soviets” (156).

Other developments in Europe comprised the “economic miracle” of West Berlin which was pumped with $600 billion of American funds. At the same time, the Soviet Union feared a militarized West Germany and sought to hand over the control of Berlin to East Germany. This situation ultimately led to the 1961 Berlin crisis and a new relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States.

At the same time, 1959 brought the Cuban Revolution in what the United States perceived as its own backyard in accordance with its 19th-century Monroe Doctrine. The country’s leader Fidel Castro carried out major changes including the nationalization of American-owned property. The United States perceived a new Communist government as a threat: “The search for a liberal alternative went on. Eisenhower gave the CIA permission to plan an invasion of Cuba and to begin training Cuban exiles to carry it out, with American support” (168).