Despite the shortcomings and contradictions emphasized above, Eisenhower’s grand strategy displayed some marked strengths and was predicated on a number of keen insights. Eisenhower correctly grasped the long-term nature of the Cold War and began to plan accordingly. His administration’s focus on the nonmilitary dimensions of Soviet-American competition led to a shrewd emphasis on the importance of public diplomacy and targeted propaganda initiatives designed to shape and influence world opinion. Perhaps most important of all, the president recognized more clearly than almost any of his contemporaries in the American policymaking elite that nuclear war could not be won and hence must not be fought. He displayed uncommon wisdom
In comprehending that central reality of international relations in the middle of the twentieth century. Measured on its own terms, furthermore, the Eisenhower approach to national security did succeed in reining in defense spending, reducing the defense budget as a percentage of gross domestic product, and slashing the number of troops under arms. All the while, Eisenhower managed to ensure that the United States’ overall military strength far surpassed that of the Soviet Union, a fact largely confirmed for him by the secret U-2 overflights of Soviet territory that began in 1956, and by the satellite reconnaissance missions that commenced in 1960.
In view of the above, it seems deeply ironic that, during his last several years in office, Eisenhower was hounded by criticisms about the presumed inadequacy of the US strategic posture, about declining American technological prowess, and about the Kremlin’s rising capabilities. Technical breakthroughs by Moscow of an undeniably significant character triggered the complaints. The Soviets followed the first successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in the summer of 1957 with the launch, in October, of Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite sent into orbit. Those achievements prompted widespread concern on the part of ordinary citizens as well as many defense experts that the United States might actually be falling behind in the arms and technological races. A political culture shaped by the relentless assaults of McCarthyism, moreover, conferred a certain legitimacy on those who would accuse Washington officialdom of laxity and malfeasance - a political fact of life that not even a Republican White House could escape. Partly to quell fears about a developing "missile gap," Eisenhower appointed a blue-ribbon commission to examine the actual state of the nuclear-arms balance. To his great frustration, the Gaither Commission’s highly classified report, completed in 1958, found that such a gap did, indeed, exist - and some of the commission’s more politically damaging conclusions were soon leaked to the press. Although the reality was the exact opposite, the imaginary missile gap became an effective political rallying cry. Democratic presidential aspirant Kennedy used it to good effect in his 1960 race against Eisenhower’s vice president, Richard M. Nixon.
World History
