"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."
--President Dwight David Eisenhower, in a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors
Ike was not kidding one bit when he said that. It was not some presidential pablum he was delivering to curry some positive press as a man who sympathized with the poor. Eisenhower backed up those words during his entire presidency. The evidence is compelling that one of the most famous generals in our nation's history, when faced with guns and butter economics, consistently chose butter.
IKE'S NATIONAL DEFENSE POLICY
When Ike took over the White House in 1953, predecessor Harry Truman had proposed an overall defense budget of $50 billion. Ike immediately trimmed it to $43.8 billion. Remarkably, he kept picking away at the defense budget for eight straight years. In his last year in office, 1960, the defense budget was down to $41.3 billion. The total number of people under arms had dropped from 3.6 million to 2.5 million.
This did not sit well with the Pentagon. Not one, but two, very famous Army Chiefs of Staff, Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor, retired in protest over Ike's reductions in the Army's personnel and budget. The loss of these two close personal friends, both of whom had served in World War II under Ike's command in Europe and had jumped into Normandy on D-Day, must have been painful, but he stood firm with his "New Look" defense policy.
New Look translated to SUFFICIENCY, not SUPERIORITY, for our armed forces. As president, Ike did not support the expense of maintaining a large standing army and cut back on its personnel and its budget. Ike hated nuclear weapons, so he would only support a nuclear program sufficient to deter the Soviet Union from starting a nuclear war, not a program that would be expansive and possibly scare the Soviets into an arms race. He observed to one of his biographers that he could take out the entire city of Moscow with one of two high yield nuclear weapons, something he knew the Russians could never bring themselves to accept. So why build a nuclear force that could destroy the entire country? Turns out, he was right.
Ike's desire to prevent a nuclear arms race with the Soviets resulted in the most spectacular proposal of the Cold War. At the Geneva Summit Conference on July 21, 1955, Eisenhower shocked the planet when he tabled his "Open Skies" proposal to the Soviet Union. Ike stated that the U.S. was prepared to exchange military blueprints and charts with the Soviets and said he was willing to go further: he invited the Soviets to build airfields in the U.S. from which Russians could overfly U.S. military installations to reassure themselves that the U.S. was not preparing an attack on the Soviet Union. In return, the U.S. would want the same privilege in the Soviet Union. Open Skies was rejected, but it clearly demonstrated Eisenhower's desire to prevent a nuclear arms race.
At the end of Ike's presidency, the U.S. had 200 nuclear-tipped ICBMs, and the Soviets had about 100. This estimate of 100 Soviet ICBMs was made through numerous overflights, 1956-1960, of the Soviet Union made possible by Eisenhower's brilliant U-2 program. Early in the program, Ike took complete control of the U-2 spy flights. He was personally briefed on every flight and personally approved each one. In those four years, there were no indications from U-2 film footage that the Soviets were building more ICBMs, or intended to build more, so Ike was content to leave well enough alone. Nonetheless, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson created a false "missile gap" during the 1960 presidential campaign. Ike, on behalf of Republican candidate Richard Nixon, said only that the missile gap didn't exist and provided no details on how he knew that. A gap actually did exist, but it was in favor of the U.S., not the Soviet Union, as Kennedy and Johnson were asserting.
President Kennedy was a man of his word when it came to ICBMs. When JFK was assassinated in 1963, there were over 1,000 ICBMs in service in the U.S., five times the number he inherited from Eisenhower. The fabulously expensive arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was now full blown, would continue for nearly 30 years, and add trillions of dollars to our federal deficit. Today, the financial landscape of this nation would be vastly improved if Ike's successors had stuck with his New Look defense policy. None of them even tried.
IKE AND WAR
During the 1952 presidential campaign, Eisenhower famously declared, "I will go to Korea," meaning he would personally go into a war zone and end the Korean War. No president before or since has ever made such a statement, and only Ike could say such a thing and get away with it. Everyone took him seriously, and that included Joseph Stalin, Mao, and North Korea's Kim Il Sung. The last person they wanted to see on Korean soil was the man who led the forces which defeated Adolph Hitler. Stalin had previously met Eisenhower on several occasions and knew firsthand about Ike's magnetic personality and leadership skills. Many senior Soviet generals also personally knew Eisenhower and had a great deal of respect for him.
The Korean War had continued to drain billions of dollars from the federal budget and over 12,000 more servicemen killed even though a bogus "stalemate" existed since mid-1951. Truman couldn't solve the stalemate. The issue revolved around a prisoner of war exchange with the Chinese and North Koreans, who held over 10,000 U.S. POWs, most of whom were eventually shot by the North Koreans or died of disease, starvation, or torture (only 2,700 were repatriated; a handful stayed with the enemy). The U.S. and its allies held 112,000 North Koreans and 20,000 Chinese as POWs. But there was a huge problem: 50,000 of those POWs refused to be repatriated, and this was unacceptable to North Korea and China. All POWs must be repatriated or it would be a huge propaganda victory for the West, in their view.
Ike broke the stalemate. In addition to his "I will go to Korea" statement, he also threatened to use nuclear weapons shortly after he became president. Game over. Five months after Ike became president, the Korean Armistice was signed on June 27, 1953. It remains in effect today.
Stopping a war, and saving thousands of lives and billions in expenditures, is one thing, but avoiding a war is another. Again, Ike used the U-2 program to help with his decision. The year was 1958, and the Communist Chinese were making very bellicose threats of invasion of the island of Formosa (known as Taiwan today) if Formosa did not cede control of two tiny islands, Quemoy and Matsu, to Communist China. Ike was faced with the formidible political power of the China Lobby in the U.S., which had considerable clout with many members of the U.S. Congress and was led by Madame Chiang Kai-shek, wife of the president of Formosa.
The China Lobby called for no appeasement with China and a delaration of war if it invaded Formosa, something which many members of Congress supported. However, U-2 flights over mainland China revealed that there was no buildup on the Chinese mainland for an invasion. None. Ike went on national TV and declared, to the delight of everyone in that tense time, "There is not going to be any appeasement, and there is not going to be any war." He called the Chinese bluff, and the crisis disappeared.
IKE AND THE FEDERAL BUDGET
If you want to talk about a fiscal hawk, Ike is your man. For the first two fiscal years of his administration, 1954-1955, he actually CUT the entire federal budget. It went from $76 billion, which he inherited from Harry Truman in 1953, to $71 billion in 1954, to $68 billion in 1955. Early on in his first term, Ike was informed by the numbers crunchers that, due to a mild recession, federal revenues would fall. He responded with a stunning concept: "We shouldn't spend more than we make." Incredibly, Congress agreed. Federal revenues did in fact fall, but spending fell slightly further. The federal government actually had a surplus revenue during that brief recession.
Ike is fairly well known for sucessfully pushing the Federal Highway Act aka the Interstate Highway Project. The idea of an interstate highway system had been around since FDR's presidency, but it was Ike who pushed the idea into reality and signed the bill which started the construction of what eventually became nearly 43,000 miles of interstate highways. But even here, Ike insisted the bill contain a "pay-as-you-go" financial clause, which translated to a federal gas and tire tax and a user tax for certain types of vehicles such as 18-wheelers. He didn't want the highways funded out the general revenue pool, but rather special highway taxes as they became available.
Eisenhower won the 1956 election by a landslide, but his luck on fiscal conservatism was about to run out. The Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress in 1956 and increased their majority in the House and Senate in the mid-term election of 1958. Another mild recession hit again in 1958, and Congress responded with pure Keynesian logic that remains today: let's spend our way out of it. Ike's veto pen was useless, and in FY 1959, the deficit of the annual budget hit $12.8 billion. In the eight years of Ike's presidency, the total federal deficit increased only $20 billion dollars, from $266 billion to $286 billion. Nearly every penny of that deficit occurred when the Democrats took control of Congress, and most of it in 1959 alone.
Despite two mild recessions while he was president, the Gross Domestic Product grew from $373 billion in 1953 to $518 billion in 1960. On a percentage basis, the economy grew an average of 4.8% per year during Ike's tenure. Not bad for a notorious tightwad with the taxpayer's money.
IKE'S LEGACY
When Eisenhower left office, many historians sniffed and pompously labeled his presidency dull, boring, and ineffectual. Ike is now consistently rated among our top ten presidents, and a case may be made that he deserves a seat at the table of the top five. Dwight Eisenhower was a true leader, a man of great strength of character, unassailable integrity, but occassionally flawed judgment. He made several terrible nominations to the Supreme Court, including William Brennan and particularly Chief Justice Earl Warren, of whom he recalled as "the biggest damn mistake I ever made." Ike did make mistakes, but perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the fact that he gained, and never lost, the trust of nearly all Americans. And he did this by giving our nation eight solid years of peace, prosperity, and fiscal responsibility. "I Like Ike" became much more than a campaign slogan.
(Information for this article was gleaned from Eisenhower biographer Stephen E. Ambrose, the Federal Highway Administration, The American Presidency Project, and The Citizen Compendium.)
19 Comments
mjs034
Could there be a better president during some of the worst of the Cold War? I can't think of one.
TLaCour
SSS, this is a fine, well-written essay. I particularly value learning how he shrank the budget and restrained the military-industrial complex push to war. He really did more to slow the growth of Fedzilla than any President since 1860.
You forgot to mention another thing he did that made us more secure and simultaneously saved us money / helped our economy, like so many of his other accomplishments: he ended the scourge of illegal immigrants that exploded from 1946 into the mid-fifties with Operation Wetback. That problem disappeared for 10 years until the Ted Kennedy – LBJ Chain Migration bill of the mid '60s.
safariman
This was Eisenhower's finest speech. It took bravery to say it, and deserves more recognition.
Novista
Remarkably fine article, SSS. I remember seeing Ike in Lexington, KY, in 1956.
Artfuldodger
Sorry fellows, but I simply cannot agree with you on Eisenhower.
SSS wrote: "Stalin had previously met Eisenhower on several occasions and knew firsthand about Ike's magnetic personality and leadership skills. Many senior Soviet generals also personally knew Eisenhower and had a great deal of respect for him."
Eisenhower was a Bolshevik lover from his earliest days, and this was the main problem he had with Patton: the latter recognized the real enemy and Eisenhower either did not or would not.
I also give him a huge amount of the credit for betraying the Cuban and Hungarian people and allowing Castro and the Soviet Union to overtake the two, respectively. Ike promised aid to both of them—then backed out.
He even telegraphed Tito and told him he would not send troops into Hungary to help the people (as he had promised) when they overthrew the Communist government in the mid-1950s. The Hungarian people were shocked, and the Soviets rolled in and easily overtook them—slaughtering and enslaving hundreds of thousands of them.
Ike, the Soviet Union lover, held Patton back, not only prolonging WWII, but it allowed the Soviets to conquer Prague & Berlin. He authorized Operation Keelhaul, which repatriated at least two million anti-communists to the USSR against their will. He also placed another million men and women in prison camps where they were held and turned over to the Soviets—then killed, raped, or sent to Russia and put in slavery in their Gulags.
Of course, you all know me and the worst thing I think he did was send troops to Little Rock, Ark, intervening in what should have been a state decision, and thrust us down the road of forced integration. Look what that’s gotten us!
His dumbest move, however, was selling out to the auto- and trucking-unions and dumping the railroads in favor of building a national highway system and shifting freight to it.
The biggest decision Eisenhower ever had was whether to run for the presidency in 1952 as a Democrat or a Republican. He had been a Democrat all his life—a big supporter of the two more leftist presidents of the Century: Truman and Roosevelt.
A Libertarian? Bah! Another statist—who in fact loved a bigger and stronger Federal Government, and it would have been fine with Ike if the US and the Soviets had merged. He never differentiated between socialism and freedom. He never held a real job in his life and had a snooty disdain for capitalism.
If you don’t believe Eisenhower was strongly pro-communist, then I would recommend "The Politician," by Robert Welch. And if you’re not familiar with Operation Keelhaul (as most Americans are not), then this book has an entire chapter on that atrocity.
"The Politician" is an early 1960s book and may not be in print today, but if you can find it and are interested in the real Ike, I recommend it.
SSS
Artful: thanks for the comments. TLC has already echoed much of what I would have said in response, but I must respectfully and vehemently reject your comments that Ike was "a Bolshevik lover from his earliest days" and "strongly pro-communist." This is unadulterated bullshit. You present nothing to back up that assessment other than to advise that we read what Robert Welch had to say about Ike. What the hell did he say? I will briefly visit Welch's writings about Ike, but it is my view that the founder of the John Birch Society was quite paranoid about communism.
I presented many facts and figures about Ike's administration, focusing on national security policy. You replied: "A Libertarian? Bah! Another statist - who in fact loved a bigger and stronger federal government...." You cannot be serious, AD. What's your definition of a statist? You don't say.
A statist, as you called Ike, does NOT cut both the overall federal budget and defense budget, as Ike clearly did, but rather increases those budgets. More money equals more power to the state. A statist does not STOP OR AVOID wars, as Ike did, but seeks excuses to GET INVOLVED IN WARS, which gravitates to even more power to the state. According to you, Ike should have gotten into shit-kicking wars over Hungary and Cuba. Oh, swell. Two more useless wars (intervention in Hungary may have triggered WW III, for God's sake) to add this country's long list of conflicts that were none of our concern. Who's got the statist thinking here, AD? You or Ike?
TLaCour
SSS, your definition of Statist is simple and accurate: someone who does whatever possible to increase the Power and Control of the State. Ike does not fit neatly into that category, any more than the Libertarian category. And starting wars in Hungary or Cuba were outstanding opportunities for Statism's increase: wars ALWAYS include greater, even if temporary, control and reach by the State.
Plus, no Statist would EVER warn against "the military-industrial complex."
Ike was complex, not simple. None of our Presidents are unblemished. But there are animals, and there are Humans. I put Ike in the latter category.