Apocalypse Management: Eisenhower and the Discourse of National Insecurity (review)

In the aftermath of the most profligate and warlike administration in recent history, many historians are taking a fonder glance at the relative prudence of many Cold War presidents. Atop many lists is Dwight D. Eisenhower, who avoided war completely for eight years, saw to the demise of the absolutist anti-communism that dominated Washington during the early 1950s, and tried to keep military spending under control. If Eisenhower failed to make much progress in resolving the Cold War, and if he did not do much at all to redress deep social inequities at home, he at least kept his cool in the face of endless international crisis, a skill that might have proved useful more recently.

Not so, writes Ira Chernus, who argues that the apocalyptic approach to global affairs that characterised the Bush administration's foreign policy was invented by Eisenhower himself. In particular, the president saw the nuclear bomb as a divine instrument of American survival in a sinful world. With the bomb Eisenhower "and his nation would be protected magically against every threat....he wanted the bomb to provide magical protection against sin—what his parents had called salvation through the grace of Jesus Christ."

Eisenhower, in other words, regarded the nuclear arsenal he built during the late 1950s as a kind of Christian fortress against the godless outside world. Thus he established a mindset, one that has persisted to this day, that American survival must depend on apocalyptic military threats, rather than on the kinds of diplomatic compromises and political negotiations that less Messianic nations use to live another day.

There is certainly something to the idea that Americans have a thing about overwhelming military power and using it to shock and awe the evil outsiders. It is also true that Eisenhower built up a nuclear arsenal during his second term that made the prospect of World War Tree apocalyptic. But Chernus's historical argumentation linking these two realities is quite weak.

One could come up with a number of reasons why this is so, but the following three stand out.

First, Chernus provides almost no evidence that Eisenhower was animated by such Messianic beliefs. According to every biographical account I have read, the president was very secular, suspicious of fundamentalisms of all kinds, devoted to the practical. Having lived in Europe for much of the Second World War, engaging with leaders from every major nation there, he possessed a cosmopolitan political mentality that totally contrasts with the middle-American provincialism Chernus describes. Because of this lack of evidence, Chernus must read into, must deconstruct, Eisenhower's otherwise straightforward language. Historians must always be willing to look beyond official statements and investigate what may really be driving political leaders. But in this case, Chernus is not convincing.

Second, the apocalyptic mentality and focus on nuclear salvation that Chernus identifies clearly predated the Eisenhower presidency. What was NSC-68, written during the Truman administration, if not a messianic document? It was Truman, not Eisenhower, who commissioned the building of the thermonuclear bomb, spending more in one year to get it ready than Roosevelt spent on the entire Manhattan project. Had Truman run for office and won in 1952, are we to believe that he would have pursued a fundamentally different course than Eisenhower? That does not make sense.

Third, and perhaps most important, Eisenhower's actions with respect to nuclear war in the late 1950s reflect the attitude of a cautious statesman terrified by nuclear omnicide rather than that of an agent of Armageddon. Time and again the president cut deals with the godless Chinese and Soviets to avoid nuclear showdowns, in so doing defying the demands of more messianic critics both within and without the White House. Indeed, the Democrats ran against Eisenhower (and Nixon) in 1960 precisely on the basis that the administration had been too timid in its crisis management with...