New York Review of Books Review

EVAN THOMAS'S "Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World" is an examination of Dwight Eisenhower's record that seeks to understand how he successfully kept the United States out of a major war during the eight years of his presidency. It is in keeping with the recent trend in complimentary revisionist histories of the administration, like "Eisenhower in War and Peace," by Jean Edward Smith, and "Eisenhower: The White House Years," by Jim Newton. Thomas tells us that once Eisenhower "extricated America from the Korean War in 1953," his mission was to "avoid any war." For that reason, Thomas, who teaches writing and journalism at Princeton and is the author of several books, concentrates on Eisenhower's foreign policy and national security decisions to the exclusion of almost everything else. The president's civil rights record, for example, is mentioned only briefly, and as a demonstration of his leadership talents. Eisenhower's ambiguity is a recurring theme in this account. His style was to avoid telling anyone his definite views on a subject. At the time of the Chinese shelling of the small islands of Quemoy and Matsu in 1958, Thomas writes, "as he so often did, Eisenhower chose studied ambiguity." In that case, Ike's bluffing proved successful, but at other times his ambiguity could create needless confusion and misunderstanding. As John F. Kennedy was about to take office in 1961, Eisenhower offered him advice on Laos, which was then falling into civil war. Eisenhower counseled the new president, in Thomas's words, to "take a hard line - and bluff," or so it seemed to Kennedy and his advisers. The problem was that Eisenhower was "cryptic and opaque." Kennedy's advisers "later claimed Ike had urged J.F.K. to send in the troops," but this was almost certainly not what he had meant. The Hungarian uprising of 1956 stands out as one of Eisenhower's best and worst moments for his policy of "take a hard line - and bluff." Though he successfully avoided a major war with the Soviet Union over Hungary, choosing containment over confrontation, his administration's rhetoric about "rolling back" Communism unfortunately encouraged Hungarians to expect American support that didn't come. The Soviet crackdown in Hungary also exposed the limitations of the C.I.A. under Eisenhower. The agency was surprised by the Soviet reaction to the uprising, but as Thomas says, "C.I.A.-backed clandestine radio stations" had been encouraging Hungarians to fight. Despite the sometimes excessive rhetoric emanating from his administration, most notably from his secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower was "remarkably willing, on occasion, to let himself appear disengaged, even weak," Thomas writes. This reflected his caution about overreacting or responding hastily to new developments. It was one of his most admirable traits. His seeming weakness often exposed him to politically motivated charges of dithering or incompetence, yet Eisenhower had enough confidence in his own judgments not to be pressured into policies he knew to be mistaken. Eisenhower's handling of the Suez crisis in the same year as the Hungarian uprising was an impressive example of this quality. Britain, France and Israel had invaded Egypt with the intention of toppling the dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser after he had seized the Suez Canal, but Eisenhower did not confuse backing allies with reflexive support for their mistakes, especially when thoughtless solidarity could draw the United States and the Soviet Union into open conflict. The crisis over the Suez was successfully resolved in part by Eisenhower's refusal to provide assistance to America's friends, which forced them to bear the costs and consequences of their blunder without any hope of being bailed out by Washington. Meanwhile, Eisenhower made sure that the Kremlin knew he strongly opposed any Soviet attempt to exploit the crisis. Thomas refers frequently to the president's skills at card games to help explain his capacity for concealment, deception and secrecy, which found expression in the repeated use of covert operations to depose foreign governments and the U-2 program for spying on the Soviet Union. Journalists and political enemies in Congress raised the issue of a "missile gap" between the United States and the Soviet Union in the late 1950s. Because of the U-2 flights, Eisenhower knew just how unfounded the charge was, but the secrecy of the program meant he was unable to disclose what he knew. Nonetheless, continued worries about the progress of the Soviet ICBM program prompted him to approve one last mission. However, the downing of a U-2 over the Soviet Union in 1960 and the capture of its pilot exposed the covert flights, and represented one of the bigger setbacks of the Eisenhower administration, helping to derail the president's initiative for détente with Moscow. As Thomas explains, Eisenhower felt "a personal sense of defeat and at times despair" over the collapse of a summit in Paris that year because of the U-2 episode. Significant achievements in arms control would have to wait for future Republican presidents. Despite the thoroughness of "Ike's Bluff," there are occasional gaps. Thomas doesn't discuss the consequences of American-supported coups in Iran and Guatemala, perhaps because that would have taken him well beyond the end of Eisenhower's tenure, but it is an unfortunate and noticeable omission. Similarly, Thomas seems unfazed by the expansion of the national security state on Eisenhower's watch. Eisenhower's farewell address is justly famous for its warnings of the dangers posed by the "military-industrial complex." Even so, it is hard not to conclude that the warning was too little and too late after Eisenhower had spent eight years presiding over the growth of that complex. Generally, however, Thomas doesn't neglect his subject's flaws, and his detailed, engaging picture of Eisenhower's personality brings him vividly to life. Most important, by the end of the book Thomas has made his case that Dwight Eisenhower's "greatest victories were the wars he did not fight." Daniel Larison is a senior editor at The American Conservative.