The Ike Age: Cold War America

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The Ike AgeCold War America

• 1952-1960

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I Like Ike Eisenhower and America

• Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)
• Ike and the Republicans
• Conservative wing
• Midwest West
• Isolationist
• Favored Robert A. Taft
• Moderate/liberal wing
• Eastern
• Internationalist
• Favored Eisenhower

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Adlai Stevenson
Eisenhower choose Richard Nixon as running-mate,
in part to appease the Republican partys
conservative wing. Republicans also won both
houses of Congress. Eisenhower defeated
Stevenson again in 1956.
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• Ike and the Historians
• 1960s-1970s
• A failure popular and appealing, but ineffective
  and lazy
• Evasive in press conferences
• Too much time on the golf links
• Symbol of conformity
• 1980s-
• Hard-working, knowledgeable, engaged
• Legacy
• Peace and prosperity
• Sense of priorities
• Traditional values
• dynamic conservatism
• Sought to steer party away from reaction
• Manage existing government programs better

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• Balanced Budgets and Highways
• Balanced budgets (5 out of 8 years)
• Sought to return powers to the states
• Federal Highway Act of 1956 Funded construction
  of interstate highway system
• Largest, most expensive public works program in
  U.S. history
• Heightened dependence on automobiles
• Accelerated suburban growth

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• The Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s
• Background
• Jim Crow segregation (Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896)
• NAACP, 1909 legal orientation
• Great Migration to the West North,
  1910s-1940s
• Trumans Fair Deal proposals desegregation of
  the military

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• Brown v. Board of Education, 1954
• Overturned Plessy v. Ferguson
• Segregated schools a violation of equal
  protection clause of 14th Amendment
• Desegregation with all deliberate speed (1955)
• White southern reaction
• White Citizens Councils
• Ku Klux Klan
• massive resistance
• Civil rights movement energized

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• Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Civil disobedience and non-violent resistance
• Montgomery (Ala.) Bus Boycott, 1955-1956
• Arrest of Rosa Parks for refusal to give up bus
  seat so white passenger could sit
• Year-long boycott of city buses organized by King
  other black leaders
• U.S. Supreme Court affirmed desegregation of
  buses in 1956
• Little Rock (Ark.) school desegregation crisis,
  1957
• Eisenhower used federal troops to enforce
  desegregation

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Eisenhower and the Cold War

• Containment vs. Liberation
• Republicans criticized Trumans containment
  policies as futile and expensive
• John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State
• Suggested U.S. should be willing to liberate
  subject peoples from Soviet domination
• In reality, Eisenhower would essentially continue
  containment

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• Ikes New Look
• more bang for the buck
• Scale back conventional forces emphasize
  strategic (nuclear) air force
• Allies supply conventional forces
• Use Central Intelligence Agency to intervene in
  trouble spots
• Indonesia
• Iran
• Guatemala

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• massive retaliation
• Nukes are an option
• brinksmanship
• Enemy must believe you will go to the brink of
  nuclear war
• Credibility equals deterrence

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• Assessment
• Successes
• End of Korean War
• Armistice signed, June 1953
• China and Taiwan
• Chinese shelling of islands Quemoy and Matsu
• Eisenhower subtly maneuvered out of crises

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• Suez Crisis, 1956
• Ike refused to back British, French, Israeli
  attempts to take Suez Canal from Egypt
• Eisenhower Doctrine, 1957
• U.S. would use force to prevent communist
  aggression in the Middle East
• Consequence of U.S. becoming chief defender of
  Western interests in region after Suez Crisis
• Rationale for placement of U.S. troops in Lebanon
  in 1958
• Geneva Summit, 1955
• Stalin died in 1953
• Moderately successful summit with new Soviet
  leader Nikita Khrushchev

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• Failures
• Hungary, 1956
• Soviets crushed uprising
• Sputnik, 1957
• Seemed to demonstrate U.S. falling behind Soviets
  in technology
• Lebanon, 1958
• U.S. troops sent in to prop up pro-Western
  regime intensified anti-Western sentiment in the
  Middle East
• U-2 incident, 1960
• Surveillance plane shot down over Soviet Union
  pilot captured
• Led to cancellation of planned summit with
  Khrushchev