The Thaw

Question 1

Why did Eisenhower implement the ‘New Look’ policy?

Answer 1

1. To distance himself from Truman who was seen as ‘soft on Communism’, by rejecting containment as ‘being futile and immoral’.
2. Eisenhower was a confident politician: a decorated war hero and ex-commmander in chief of Nato. He was thus less susceptible from attacks from Mc Carthy about the red scare. Mc Carthy also died in 1957, so his effect on Eisenhower’s presidency was limited.
3. Eisenhower was acutely aware of the power of the military industrial complex on living standards: By 1954, 12% of America’s GNP was being spent on armaments.
4. By 1958, data from U2 spyplanes meant that Eisenhower was secretly confident of US nuclear superiority over the USSR and could negotiate from a position of strength.

Question 2

Name the 5 aspects of Eisenhower’s foreign policy.

Answer 2

1. Massive Retaliation
2. Domino Theory
3. Eisenhower Doctrine
4. Increased use of covert operations
5. Brinkmanship

Question 3

What was the Eisenhower Doctrine?

Answer 3

It began in 1957 with Eisenhower speaking to congress, announcing that America would try to halt the spread of communism to the middle East, motivated by protecting oil supplies

Question 4

What was Brinkmanship?

Answer 4

A key part of Eisenhower’s foreign policy. Dulles described it as “Getting to the verge of war without actually getting into a war” or as Bertrand Russell described it, ‘Chicken’. It was used successful during the First Taiwan Straits Crisis of 1953

Question 5

What was the significance of the Geneva Summit?

Answer 5

A key achievement of the thaw: it was the first time that all 4 powers (Eisenhower form the USA, Eden from the UK, Faure from France and Khrushchev from the USSR) had met since Postdam in 1945. Important symbolic measures like a cultural exchange was agreed. Although, Eisenhower proposed an open skies agreement which was rejected by Khrushchev as ‘a ploy to look inside our bedrooms’.

Question 6

Identify 8 achievements of ‘The Thaw’ period.

Answer 6

1. The end of the Korean War in 1953
2. The USSR settled border disputes with Turkey and Iran in 1953
3. Also in 1953, the USSR re-established diplomatic relations with Greece and formally recognised the state of Israel
4. In 1955, the USSR re-established relations with Tito’s Yugoslavia and formally tecognised the existence of West Germany
5. In 1955 Austria was re-unified
6. The Geneva Summit also occured in 1955
7. Soviet withdrawal from Finland in 1957= The first time in history the USSR had willingly withdrawn troops from Europe

Question 7

Identify 6 Factors as to why ‘The Thaw’ period occurred.

Answer 7

1. The entrenchment of Post-WW2 borders and spheres of influence (Nato set up in 1949, The Warsaw Pact in 1955)
2. Death of Stalin in 1953
3. The Soviet Policy of Peaceful Coexistence, first developed by Malenkov in 1952
4. The effects of the military industrial copmplex on living standards
5. Eisenhower’s abilities (as a decorated war hero and ex-commander in chief of NATO) to negotiate
6. Fear of nuclear war (Both powers had the H bomb by 1955)

Question 8

When was ‘The Thaw Period’?

Answer 8

From Stalin’s death in 1953, to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961

Question 9

Could the foreign policy of Eisenhower and Dulles be described as ‘empty rhetoric’?

Answer 9

YES-

1. Failure to intervene in Eastern Europe could not be constituted as the ‘rollback’ Eisenhower had promised (1956 Hungarian Uprising- all America did was take 25,000 refugees… The Hungarian revolutionaries, spurred on by Radio Free Europe waited for an American army which never arrived )
2. Eisenhower’s private wariness about nuclear weapons undermined the credibility of Massive Retaliation (“We can’t have a war, there aren’t enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets”)

NO-
1. Massive Retaliation was used to good effect in ending the Korean Civil War, in 1953 and the Taiwan Straits Crisis in 1956: in this respect it does not matter wether Eisenhower was sincere or not because the threats worked.

2. Secret CIA operations delivered rollback: Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954… although the nature of Guatemala has been dubbed ‘imperialism’ by some due to the brutal nature of the Junta which took Arbenz’s place
3. The wider achievements of the Thaw, like the Austrian State Treaty, which represented the first time Soviet troops had willingly left Europe, could arguably be called ‘rollback’ although Eisenhower only had a minimal role in bringing this about

Question 10

Name two secret CIA interventions which took place during Eisenhower’s presidency.

Answer 10

In 1953, Prime Minister Mossadegh of Iran was ousted in a CIA backed coup to install the pro-Western Pahlavi as the Shah of Iran to ensure that the USA had allies on the USSR’s Western border. Importantly, US involvement was only revealed 60 years later.

Guatemala in 1954, although the credit for this cannot be solely attributed to Eisenhower, as it was initially Truman who had advocated this in 1952. A ruthless Junta took Arbenz’s place.

Question 11

What happened at the Vienna Summit?

Answer 11

The Vienna Summit in June 1961 was the first time Khrushchev and Kennedy met each other. Kennedy went in cocky and arrogant, having just won an election, and emerged shaken, saying “I’ve got a problem if Khrushchev thinks I’m weak: he just beat the hell out of me”. Khrushchev exploited Kennedy’s weakness and went ahead and built the Berlin wall.

Question 12

When was the Berlin wall built?

Answer 12

August 1961