Destroying the Village: Eisenhower and Thermonuclear War

Campbell Craig

Columbia University Press

1998

5.Fallout, April 1957–November 1958

 

On October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union launched the earth satellite Sputnik. It was a demonstration of Soviet scientific prowess that shocked the West, and it was also a noisy reminder to interested observers everywhere that the Soviet missile program was proceeding just fine.

Immediately, political adversaries of the president seized upon the specter of Soviet scientific superiority both to wage a partisan attack against him and to advance the interests of the aerospace industries. ₁ These critics warned, with increasing hysteria, that the satellite indicated a decisive Russian advantage in the race to build ICBMs. Senator Stuart Symington and the syndicated columnist Joseph Alsop, working with information provided to them by not disinterested sources in the military and arms industries, predicted publicly that the Soviet Union would deploy arsenals of 1,000, 2,000, even 3,000 ICBMs by 1962 or 1963. ₂ Symington, along with other Democratic colleagues in the Senate, including Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy, demanded major increases in defense spending to forestall the imminent missile gap, and suggested that Eisenhower’s resistance to these increases was due to his inability to appreciate the perils of Soviet ICBM superiority. Senator Henry Jackson called for a "National Week of Shame and Danger." ₃ Hastily, the president agreed to increase defense spending for fiscal 1959, and he also authorized, ahead of schedule, a test of an American satellite, "Vanguard." In late November Eisenhower suffered a mild stroke. While recuperating, he got to watch Vanguard explode on its launching pad. ₄

In a strictly political sense, these events devastated Eisenhower. After his November stroke and the Vanguard debacle, the president’s critics had a field day, forcing him to sign on to further defense increases and openly contrasting Soviet prowess with Republican inaction. Gravely warning of national peril, Senators Kennedy and Johnson (and others) succeeded in elevating themselves into the national spotlight, where they stayed long enough to seize the White House in 1960. ₅

The Soviet satellite’s effect upon U.S. military policy, however, turned out to be slight. Eisenhower and his critics, in the recent struggle over NSC&-;5707/8, had been working from the expectation that Soviet ICBM capability was imminent, so the news that the Russians had put a 200-pound rock into orbit did not invalidate the assumptions underlying American defense policy. ₆ After all, the internal debate over nuclear policy in 1956 and 1957 had been about what to do when, not if, the Soviets attained ICBM capability. All Sputnik did, from the strictly military point of view, was confirm vividly that day was soon to come. As we have seen, for fear of a Soviet advantage in missile capability Eisenhower had made, back in 1955, the development of American ICBMs a national objective "of the highest priority"; as far as he knew the first U.S. intercontinental missile was to become operational in 1959. ₇ The United States deployed nuclear weapons in Europe which could retaliate against any Soviet ICBM attack, as could the large fleet of American bombers. What more could Eisenhower have done? "[W]e are getting close to absolutes when the ability exists to inflict 50% casualties on an enemy," the president said in November. ₈

It is true, as will be seen below, that the Soviet satellite encouraged the enemies of NSC–5707/8 to revive alternatives to Eisenhower’s all-or-nothing policy. But the president would have none of it. Having recovered quickly from his November stroke, Eisenhower rebuffed his critics, rejecting their pleas that he alter the military policy he now had in place. ₉ Moreover, he got a chance in the summer of 1958 to utilize his new policy, in a sort of trial run, during the second confrontation between communist and nationalist Chinese forces over the offshore island chain of Quemoy–Matsu.

 

The Gaither Report

The first and most conspicuous challenge to Eisenhower’s new policy in the aftermath of Sputnik came in the form of yet another top-secret study on modern war. In April of 1957 the NSC had put together a commission to study American civil defenses. In early November this commission, having been emboldened by the Soviet satellite to expand its task into evaluating American nuclear defenses generally, completed their study, entitled it "Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age," and presented it to the president. Because of the Sputnik controversy the study, popularly known as the "Gaither report," ₁₀ was leaked immediately, and it thus became a topic of public debate rather than a secret report for the disposal of American policymakers.

The Gaither report was a comprehensive criticism of Eisenhower’s nuclear policies. The United States, it stated, had virtually no defense against a surprise Soviet missile attack and could be vulnerable by 1959 to a devastating defeat. The nation’s retaliatory forces were inadequate, as were its military and civil defense programs and overseas missile deployments. In effect, the report stated, the Sputnik critics were right: because of poor warning systems and lagging ICBM production, the Soviet Union was on the verge of attaining decisive superiority. "The peril to the United States," the chairman of the commission himself warned, "must be measured in megatonnage in the years ahead." ₁₁

Eisenhower met with the commission on November 4 to discuss its top secret report, soon to be summarized in the New York Times. He responded to the report’s criticisms by reiterating his new views on thermonuclear war. Both sides would soon have massive ICBM arsenals. "In these circumstances," he stated, "there is in reality no defense except to retaliate.. . . maximum massive retaliation remains the crux of our defense." Gaither’s proposal for a national bomb shelter program would not solve the problem either. It "would be better to use the same funds for other things," Eisenhower said, because, shelters or not, if "50% destruction of our industries and cities occurred, [he] did not see how the nation could survive as an organized society." ₁₂

If the Gaither report’s authors hoped to capitalize upon the Sputnik furor by persuading Eisenhower to take active steps to reduce America’s vulnerability to Soviet ICBM attack, they failed. The president believed that, in the event of general war, there was no escape from mutual destruction: it would be futile, as well as expensive, to limit or defend against a war of missiles between the United States and the Soviet Union. Three days after the Gaither presentation, the NSC directed the Departments of Defense and State, the CIA, and the Budget office to take some of the report’s arguments into consideration, and Eisenhower would later create a scientific advisory board and agree to spend more on civil defense. But he was not going to take more fundamental steps. In this, he received direct support from General Thomas of the Net Evaluation Committee, who predicted in November, that a Soviet attack could "kill from 1/4 to 1/2 of the U.S. population and injure many more in the process; and the military and civilian leadership of the U.S. at the Seat of Government would be virtually wiped out." ₁₃

In January Eisenhower used this terrifying news to belittle the Gaither commission’s main objective, the construction of a nationwide shelter program. The president noted that it had been said that fallout shelters might save 50 million people, a reduction of 35% in casualties. In talking about such figures, we were talking about the destruction of the United States. There would be no way of living in a situation of such large casualties. ₁₄

Dulles’s Renewed Dissent

As soon as Eisenhower had pushed through NSC–5707/8 back in April and May, Dulles began to imply publicly that Eisenhower’s new military policy was not what it was. The Secretary of State wanted to suggest to America’s European allies that in the event of a Soviet attack NATO would have some option other than a spasmodic nuclear retaliation. Dulles feared that the Europeans would become demoralized by an all-or-nothing policy: some would push for more conciliatory approaches to the Russians, in order to avoid the immediate holocaust that war would bring; others would demand their own nuclear arsenals, skeptical that in the end the United States would really wage an intercontinental nuclear war to defend Western Europe. ₁₅ Dulles also directed his implied disapproval of the new policies toward the president. He thought NSC–5707/8 was a disastrous mistake, and wanted to show Eisenhower the error of his ways.

Speaking at a June 1957 Defense Department secretaries’ conference in Quantico, Virginia, Dulles tried out his new line. He noted that massive retaliation "has certain apparent weaknesses" in the thermonuclear age, and worried that there was "a growing question in the minds of some of our allies" as to whether the United States could be relied on to "perhaps destroy human life on the northern half of the globe" when faced with communist aggression. Fortunately, though, the United States was developing tactical nuclear weapons to deal with Soviet "nibbling operations," a plan based "on the theory that we would not, in fact, respond with the only weapon at hand because that would involve excessive cost to humanity." ₁₆

Going further, Dulles reiterated in the October 1957 number of Foreign Affairs the argument he had made at Quantico and at the NSC meeting on NSC–5707/8 back in May. The United States, he wrote, had once been forced to threaten massive retaliation against the Soviet Union, but now "it is possible to alter the character of nuclear weapons. It seems now that their use need not involve vast destruction and widespread harm to humanity.

"In the future," Dulles continued, "it may thus be feasible to place less reliance upon deterrence of vast retaliatory power." While the Soviet Union clung to its propagandistic claim that nuclear bombs were merely "horror" weapons, civlized statesmen in the West, Dulles implied, were learning otherwise. "New weapons possibilities are opening up in rapid succession. Political thinking finds it difficult to keep up with that pace." ₁₇

This article informed Europeans that the American Secretary of State looked down upon the policy of using "vast retaliatory power" to defend them, and this was certainly his intention. Dulles’s ambiguity about American military policy might make Europeans inclined toward neutralism or nuclear independence think twice. He was also able to reassure these allies without explicitly contradicting his administration’s policy—after all, he was writing about a future technological innovation, to which enlightened policymakers would naturally adapt.

However, the peculiar thesis of this article, together with the fact that Dulles had presented it pretty much verbatim back in May in his opposition to Eisenhower’s new proposals, suggests that Europeans were not the only people Dulles hoped would read it. ₁₈ The Secretary of State was genuinely disturbed by the reckless policy his president had put forth that spring. He did realize that upon the question of trying to beat back a Soviet invasion with American conventional forces, Eisenhower’s mind was made. A war with the Russians would be a nuclear war; Dulles, as he put it in the May discussion, was more "realistic" about that than others in Washington. But that did not mean the possibility of limited war in Europe was gone forever: maybe the prospect of new technologies, of tactical nuclear weapons that were clearly well-suited to battlefield use, could cause the president to rethink his all-or-nothing approach. Dulles could not accept the fatalistic conclusion that to defend Europe from the communists it would be necessary to wage general thermonuclear war. There had to be an alternative. "No man," he argued in January 1958, "should arrogate the power to decide that the future of mankind would benefit by an action entailing the killing of tens of millions of people." ₁₉ It was crucial, Dulles mistakenly believed, to persuade Eisenhower of this.

In March of 1958 the NSC returned to its annual update of basic policy, and it was during the spring months that Dulles and other administration critics—including, now, national security special assistant Robert Cutler—waged a last campaign to change Eisenhower’s mind. On March 20 Cutler made his opposition to Eisenhower’s military policy clear, stating that "our allies are losing their faith in our will to make use of our nuclear retaliatory capability in the event of Soviet attack." ₂₀ Dulles, more optimistic about the Europeans, demurred, and during the next NSC meeting a week later he kept his own counsel as Eisenhower rejected Cutler’s logic outright. When "we talk about a vast nuclear exchange between us and the enemy," the president said, adding a preposition, "we are in fact talking about something the results of which are almost impossible to conceive of." Shelters were too expensive to build on a nationwide basis; and in any case limited war with the Russians was impossible. All-out attack would continue as the basis of American military policy. ₂₁

On April 1 Dulles met with Eisenhower privately to discuss America’s "national strategic concept." During this conversation he formally told Eisenhower that he opposed official policy. NSC–5707/8, he stated, "too much invoked massive nuclear attack in the event of any clash anywhere of United States with Soviet forces." This was wrong and needed to be changed. The United States must develop tactical nuclear weapons and other limited strategies, so that it could wage a war with the Soviet Union "short of wholesale obliteration." Eisenhower’s current policy "did not adequately take account of the possibilities of limited war." ₂₂ The president did not want simply to dismiss so clear a dissent from his vigorous Secretary of State. He asked Dulles to set up a study group. Eisenhower could consider its report when the NSC met to discuss the new BNSP for 1958.

The leading members of the new study group, Dulles and Cutler, took to their task seriously. Dulles, belying the optimism he had displayed in front of Eisenhower on March 20, warned during an April 7 meeting that without a change in American policy a loss of will in Europe was indeed possible. Using language similar to that which the Kennedy campaign would use in 1960, he complained that if current military policy "is simply that of general war we build weapons only for that, thus leaving us unable to take other kinds of action, and making us prisoners of a frozen concept." Cutler agreed, urging in a memorandum sent to Defense Secretary Neil McElroy that American military policy be changed to deal with limited aggression. In a study group paper, which he hoped to present to the president before the rewriting of BNSP, Cutler warned of a "growing doubt in the Free World whether the United States will use its massive nuclear capability, except in direct retaliation to direct attack on the United States or its forces." ₂₃

On May 1 the NSC finally met to discuss NSC–5810, the proposed BNSP for that year. The new draft, essentially a reprise of NSC–5707/8, contained no significant changes in its section on "military elements." Immediately, the critics of Eisenhower’s all-or-nothing policy went on the attack. General Taylor, echoing the argument Nitze had put forth the previous fall, urged that the United States, by increasing its limited-war forces, could use massive retaliation as an "umbrella," under which smaller wars could be fought without their automatically escalating into all-out nuclear war. ₂₄ He proposed, on behalf of the Navy and Marine Corps chiefs as well as himself, that the council adopt an alternative paragraph (one evidently drafted by the study group) to the one Eisenhower had dictated on the separation of general from limited war. Dulles seconded this proposal, saying that without a new American nuclear policy NATO would collapse in "three years or so." ₂₅

Eisenhower offered an interesting rebuttal of Taylor’s proposal. "Actually," he argued,

the umbrella would be a lightning rod. Each small war makes global war the more likely. For example, the President said he simply could not believe that if the Soviets tried to seize Austria we could fight them in what the President called a nice, sweet, World War II type of war.

"Obviously," Eisenhower added, "the Secretary of State takes the opposite view." ₂₆

Indeed, Dulles stepped up the attack. The lack of significant American non-nuclear forces in Europe, he warned, would undermine NATO and lead to the collapse of the Western alliance. Without a credible conventional deterrent in Europe, NATO allies could reach the demoralizing conclusion that the only way to repel Soviet aggression would be to destroy the world. "These allies," he insisted, "must at least have the illusion that they have some kind of defensive capability against the Soviets other than the United States using a pushbutton to start a global nuclear war." Exasperated, Dulles said that he would presently go to Berlin. When he got there he would repeat what he had said in Berlin four years ago—namely, that an attack on Berlin would be considered by us to be an attack on the United States. Secretary Dulles added that he did not know whether he himself quite believed this or, indeed, whether his audience would believe it. But he was going to perform this ritual act. ₂₇

Unruffled, Eisenhower expressed surprise, and said that if we did not respond in this fashion to a Soviet attack on Berlin, we would first lose the city itself and, shortly after, all of Western Europe. If all of Western Europe fell into the hands of the Soviet Union. . . the United States would indeed be reduced to the character of a garrison state if it was to survive at all. ₂₈

Eisenhower’s answer to Dulles’s challenge was, for the frustrated Secretary of State, no answer at all. The president stated that a small war over something like Berlin would be a "lightning rod" sure to ignite general war; such a war would destroy American society. Yet the United States, to avoid being reduced to a "garrison state, if it was to survive at all," must regard an attack upon the peculiar Cold War outpost of West Berlin as an attack upon the United States justifying an all-out U.S. response. To save Berlin, in other words, it would be necessary to destroy the United States. The president had persisted in committing this fallacy. How long would he maintain such an illogical position?

After the May 1 NSC debate, opposition to retaining the language from NSC–5707/8 came to an end, and NSC–5810/1 became formal policy later that month. Dulles accepted this decision, though only after issuing a caveat that "military doctrine is in flux at the moment and that the military paragraphs which we write into Basic Policy at the moment may not remain valid very long." ₂₉ This was doubtless how Dulles saw it, but his suggestion that with time policy would change turned out to be incorrect. As of the summer of 1958 Eisenhower was done entertaining alternatives to the stark basic national security policy he had conceived back in 1956. Criticism of this policy would continue, but he would no longer take it seriously.

 

The Second Quemoy–Matsu Crisis

On August 23, 1958 the Chinese communists resumed their artillery attacks upon Nationalist forces stationed on Quemoy and Matsu. American policy, which stemmed from the first crisis in 1955, stipulated coming to the aid of the Taiwanese to defend these tiny islands. Suddenly, Eisenhower had to decide whether to interpret the Chinese shelling as an attack on the islands, follow written policy, and go to war against mainland China, or to find a way to avoid war. The second Taiwan straits crisis lacked the intensity of later crises, because the United States was not as committed to the offshore islands as it was to other parts of the world, and because it was not certain that the Soviet Union would join the Chinese if the war escalated. Nevertheless, during late August and September the United States faced for the first time a crisis that could plausibly have triggered global thermonuclear exchange.

The Chinese communists began a campaign of rhetorical threats about two weeks before they actually initiated their attack, so Washington had time to prepare for hostilities. Dulles suggested to Eisenhower on August 12 "that perhaps we should consider that an attack on them [Quemoy and Matsu] constitutes an attack on Formosa." Since American policy had made Taiwan a basic Cold War stake, the Secretary of State was proposing that the United States should consider launching a war against China, and then perhaps Russia too, once the Chinese moved against the islands. Eisenhower declined to agree, even after Dulles suggested that the whole affair signified a Chinese and Soviet probe to see how the Soviet attainment of missiles would soften American resolve. The president did, however, instruct Dulles to make a general announcement that an attack on the islands would bring the United States into the conflict. Meanwhile, Cutler retrieved NSC–5723, a policy blueprint for the offshore islands, which stated that the American objective in any crisis would be to maintain the status quo. Only the president, however, could authorize actual U.S. military action to help the Nationalists. ₃₀

Undersecretary of State Christian Herter asked Policy Planning Staff director Gerard Smith to look more specifically into the military element of NSC–5723, the use of atomic attacks against Chinese coastal bases. Smith reported back after meeting with the Joint Chiefs that current war plans "call for the defense of Quemoy and Matsu by nuclear strikes deep into Communist China, including military targets in the Shanghai–Hangchow–Nanking and Canton complexes where population density is extremely high." In case his point was missed, Smith added that in the event of such attacks "there would be millions of non-combatant casualties." Further, Smith wrote, an NIE report had predicted that after an attack like this "Peiping and its Soviet ally would probably feel compelled to react with nuclear attacks at least on Taiwan and the [U.S.] seventh fleet. Under our present strategic concept, this would be the signal for general nuclear war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R." ₃₁

After the usual NSC meeting on August 14 a small group met with Eisenhower to discuss NSC–5723. Eisenhower repeated his opinion that the islands were worth nothing from a military point of view but were important in maintaining Taiwanese morale. Referring to Smith’s memorandum, Herter noted that the Joint Chiefs believed that repelling the Chinese from the islands would require attacking Chinese air bases on the mainland. JCS chairman Twining confirmed this. Eisenhower rejected the idea that defending Quemoy and Matsu justified using atomic weapons. He said that "we should not be drawn into spreading out the area of conflict, and thereby probably bringing the USSR in to render support to its principal ally, thus leading to general war." The president laid out the basic plan: the United States would preserve the status quo by helping the Chinese nationalists hold onto Quemoy and Matsu, but the help would not include bombardment of Chinese air bases—a step the Chiefs thought necessary—for fear of nuclear escalation. "We must try to define fixed limits to the action," Eisenhower concluded. ₃₂

Eisenhower’s recommendation, of course, skirted the issue: the Chiefs were declaring that defending Quemoy and Matsu required the use of atomic weapons, and instead of rebutting this claim on its own terms the president simply stated that while the defense of the islands was necessary, nuclear weapons would expand the conflict into general war and therefore ought not to be used. On August 15 Herter met with the Joint Chiefs to make sense of Eisenhower’s illogic. Twining warned that if the United States failed to support the Nationalist effort to hold onto the islands, Taiwan would eventually fall. It would be necessary, at the outset, "to use low-yield atomic bombs" to repel a Communist attack. Herter agreed that Eisenhower simply had to "make a determination that an attack on the Offshore Islands is an attack on Taiwan." Once he committed to this, Herter reasoned, then he could not reject plans to use atomic weapons, since the defense of Taiwan had long been designated as essential to U.S. security and worthy of nuclear war. It was a matter of pinning Eisenhower down. ₃₃

On August 23 the Chinese communists began to attack Taiwanese forces stationed on Quemoy–Matsu with artillery shelling. For the moment, they were making no obvious preparations to invade the islands, so it was up to Washington to decide how to interpret this action. Dulles declared, via a public statement to Thomas Morgan, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, that an actual Chinese attack would "constitute a threat to the peace of the area." ₃₄ Eisenhower’s private reaction was equally moderate. The United States, he declared in an August 25 White House meeting, would refrain from publicizing the Chinese aggression, while quietly informing the Nationalists of American contingency plans should the Chinese actually invade the islands. ₃₅ Herter wondered whether the U.S. should not offer the Nationalist government something more solid than that. Eisenhower’s reply was negative. There should be "no full commitment," he said. It was crucial to "avoid making statements from which we might later back off." ₃₆

Those on the scene demanded more commitment. Chiang Kai-Shek, surprised that Eisenhower had not responded more forcefully, demanded on August 24, 26, and 27 that the United States provide him with the "moral and military support" to beat back the communist attack. Chiang was not happy about enduring the bombardment passively. He had deployed an astonishing proportion of his troops on the small islands in order to confront the communists provocatively, believing that the Americans meant what they said about "liberating" the mainland. Here was a golden opportunity to begin the great liberation, but Eisenhower was instead asking him simply to absorb the communist attack. Via the sympathetic American ambassador to Taiwan, Everett Drumright, Chiang pleaded for more support. ₃₇

At the same time U.S. military commanders in and around the Islands demanded more discretion. General Felix Smoot, Commander of U.S. forces in Taiwan, suggested in a telegram that Eisenhower give local commanders authorization to "employ [their] own forces against artillery position. In the event that a[ir]c[ra]ft are engaged by substantial Chicom air opposition," Smoot continued, "we must be prepared, as the next step, to attack Chicom airfields immediately, preferably with nuclear weapons." The Commander of the Seventh Fleet concurred: the problem of supplying the offshore islands from the Taiwanese mainland had become "critical. . . we will have to knock out Chicom batteries if islands are to survive." ₃₈

Neither Chiang nor the military commanders got what they wanted. Dulles was on vacation over the last week of August, and during this crucial period Eisenhower did not waver, either in public declarations or in private meetings, from his policy of supporting the Nationalist position in general terms while specifically ruling out any action that might escalate the conflict into a wider war. ₃₉ During the August 25 meeting the president approved a plan which, in the event of an actual communist invasion of the islands, would offer the nationalists limited American military backing. The U.S. would establish a formal convoy between Taiwan and the islands, and attack Chinese coastal bases with conventional forces only—this despite the Chiefs’ opinion that a conventional attack would be ineffectual. No local commander was to move against the Chinese mainland without direct authorization from Washington, and the decision to use atomic weaponry, of any kind, was to be made only by the president himself. ₄₀ On the 29th, the same day that Chinese Communist radio demanded that the U.S. "get the hell out of Taiwan," and urged Taiwanese to kill their American advisers and defect, Eisenhower went further. He ordered that the United States was not to use nuclear weapons in the limited war to defend Quemoy and Matsu. Nuclear weapons were only for general war, he declared, and "there would be no difficulty in identifying the type of massive attack which might require more drastic action." ₄₁

Publicly, Eisenhower also took a moderate stance. On August 27 the Chinese Communist government publicly asserted its determination to overrun Quemoy and Matsu and then go on to retake Taiwan as well. ₄₂ This was a provocation to which the American administration in 1955 would have surely responded by rattling some nuclear sabers, by comparing nuclear weaponry to "a bullet," for example. Yet on two separate occasions that day Eisenhower made a point of foregoing two kinds of nuclear threats: the conspicuous demonstration of power, and the cavalier allusion to nuclear war. During a meeting with SAC representatives to discuss nuclear testing, a proposal to go through with a scheduled explosion of a "large weapon" at the Eniwetok testing area came up. Instead of seizing this opportunity to demonstrate America’s will Eisenhower canceled the test. He "did not think it was a good moment to conduct a large test in the Pacific." ₄₃ Later that afternoon, during a long press conference, Eisenhower refused on several occasions to turn a reporter’s obviously leading question into a public threat. May Craig of the Portland Press Herald asked Eisenhower whether the United States could "be defeated in an all-out first-blow nuclear war"; Eisenhower did not answer with a gritty negative but instead assured her that any nation "foolish" enough to launch a first blow "would itself be destroyed," as if that were at issue. Chalmers Roberts of the Washington Post asked if Eisenhower considered the two islands "more important than ever to the defense of Formosa itself," to which Eisenhower replied with the evasive "you simply cannot make military decisions until the event reaches you." Perhaps concluding that his colleagues were insufficiently blunt, Felix Belair of the New York Times asked Eisenhower if local commanders had discretionary power to use tactical atomic weapons. Eisenhower answered this question literally, stating that he was unsure about any exception to his ultimate authority, thus spurning an easy chance to scare the Chinese by suggesting that American—or maybe even Nationalist Chinese—colonels could initiate nuclear war. ₄₄

As later events would also show, however, Eisenhower could not simply put forth a moderate, non-nuclear policy and expect all happily to accept it. Chiang Kai-Shek, for example, was shocked to learn that the United States was not determined to defend Quemoy and Matsu with atomic war. As Drumright reported it, the Generalissimo’s reaction to Eisenhower’s announcement was "furious," the "most violent I have seen him exhibit." ₄₅ Chiang demanded that Eisenhower specify the American commitment to the islands. Instead, Eisenhower responded with a vague statement, noting his "firm, unwavering policy to support the security and international prestige of the Government of the Republic of China." ₄₆ Of more concern to the president than Chiang was Dulles, back from vacation on September 1. Eisenhower invited Dulles immediately up to his vacation home on the naval base in Newport, Rhode Island, in order to coordinate crisis policy, but the Secretary of State declined, proposing instead that he first meet with representatives from the Joint Chiefs and the Pentagon. Dulles wanted to know, before meeting with the president, what American military options in the Taiwan straits really were. ₄₇

In a meeting the next day JCS chairman Twining gave Dulles an answer. Reiterating his earlier position, Twining rejected Eisenhower’s plan to use conventional weapons only to rebuff a Chinese attack. To repel an invasion of Quemoy and Matsu, he said, "we would strike at Communist air fields and shore batteries with atomic weapons. All the studies carried out by Defense indicated that this was the only way to do the job," he added; "the use of conventional weapons would mean our involvement in another protracted Korean War-type conflict." Dulles noted that Twining’s view "had important implications affecting the government’s whole foreign policy," and expressed his specific fear that using nuclear weapons in the Pacific would terrify the Europeans, causing them to reject a NATO defense policy based upon nuclear warfare. Chairman Twining demurred, saying that he "could not understand the public horror at the idea of using nuclear weapons.. . . we must get used to the idea that such weapons had to be used." Here was proof for the Secretary of State of the inadequacy of NSC–5707/8. "[I]f we shrink from using nuclear weapons when military circumstances so require," Dulles concluded, "then we will have to reconsider our whole defense posture." ₄₈

On September 4 Dulles went to Newport to finalize policy with the president. He brought with him a memorandum he had completed after the September 2 meeting, which stated that the fall of Quemoy and Matsu would surely lead to the collapse of Taiwan. If that happened America’s other allies along the Pacific rim, including Japan, would "probably fall within the Sino–Soviet orbit." To defeat a Chinese invasion of Quemoy and Matsu the United States, as Twining had asserted, would have to use nuclear weapons. And this was a terrible dilemma, because such an action, Dulles added, would create a "strong popular revulsion against the United States in most of the world." ₄₉

The two met at 10:30 on the morning of September 4, and Dulles immediately handed Eisenhower the memorandum. The Secretary of State was direct: referring Eisenhower to the section on nuclear weapons, he reminded him that "we have geared our defense to the use of these in case of hostilities of any size, and stating that, if we will not use them when the chips are down because of adverse world opinion, we must revise our defense setup." ₅₀ Dulles here, as in his memorandum, was pointing out to Eisenhower the defect of current military policy. By eliminating limited war options and diminishing conventional capabilities Eisenhower had ensured that every significant crisis would be a nuclear crisis. Not only did this threaten the world with general nuclear war over some insignificant islands off the Chinese shore, it also damaged the really important alliance the United States had (in Dulles’s eyes), because the Europeans were understandably terrified by the idea that World War III would go immediately nuclear, and at the same time skeptical that the Americans would really trade Boston for Bonn. The confrontation over Quemoy and Matsu gave Dulles the opportunity to show the president how misguided NSC–5707/8 was in the real world of international diplomacy and crisis.

But Dulles also understood quite well that nothing could be done about Eisenhower’s military policies now. Indeed, on September 3 Dulles had received from Gerard Smith an updated version of the memorandum Smith had completed in August, reminding the Secretary that the Joint Chiefs’ plan to respond to an invasion of the islands by striking Chinese coastal targets would—according to a recent National Intelligence Estimate—invite Sino–Soviet nuclear retaliation and trigger the outbreak of general war. The same estimate argued that neither China nor the Soviet Union was ready to risk war over Quemoy and Matsu. ₅₁ As far as this immediate crisis was concerned, reason dictated finding a compromise.

Dulles and Eisenhower considered the issue at Newport. When Dulles proposed that, in the event of a direct assault on the islands, the U.S. attack Chinese bases with low-yield air-burst atomic weapons, Eisenhower replied that the "Communist retaliation with nuclear weapons might well be against Taiwan itself and beyond rather than simply directed at Quemoy." What point would there be in defending Quemoy and Matsu if in the ensuing war Taiwan, "and beyond," were destroyed with nuclear weapons? ₅₂ According to the Goodpaster account of this conversation, Eisenhower rejected Dulles’s suggestion, and then diverted the discussion by reminiscing about D-Day preparations. He spoke of the problem of night bombardment from dispersed bases in China, recollecting that the United States could be put in a similar situation to that of the Germans in 1944. ₅₃ That afternoon Dulles issued a rather bland public statement of U.S. intentions, reiterating the U.S. determination to defend Taiwan, and his own view that the fate of the two islands were "increasingly. . . related" to that end. Then Dulles promised that "military dispositions have been made by the United States so that a Presidential determination, if made, would be followed by action both timely and effective." ₅₄

As this strange account suggests, something else not meant to appear in the formal record was going on in the September 4 discussion between Eisenhower and Dulles. On that day Dulles composed a memorandum of a conversation he had had with Lord Hood, the British ambassador. In this conversation Dulles broached the idea of forcing the Nationalists to demilitarize Quemoy and Matsu, in exchange for a promise from the Communists not to invade the islands. ₅₅ Such a compromise, while bound to enrage Chiang, would prove face-saving to both sides and prevent the war that neither side, even the supposedly fanatical Chinese Communists, wanted to occur.

Events moved quickly following Dulles’s suggestion to Hood. On September 6 the Chinese premier, Chou En-lai, announced a Chinese willingness to commence talks with the United States. Not slow to react, Eisenhower on that same day demanded that Dulles secure "concrete and definite acceptance of Chou En-lai’s offer to negotiate." On the 7th, Dulles stated in a department memorandum his "decided interest" in demilitarizing the islands, and instructed the State Department’s Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs adviser, Marshall Green, to make clear to the Joint Chiefs that there were to be no "provocative actions" in the Straits area. The next day Dulles sent a telegram to the American ambassador to Poland, Jacob Beam, authorizing him formally to pursue negotiations with his Chinese counterpart in Warsaw. Dulles also contacted Drumright in Taipei, to inform him of the new reality: the negotiators in Warsaw, and then perhaps the United Nations, were now the "arbiters" of the Offshore Islands crisis. It was Drumright’s unenviable task to tell Chiang this news, and to ensure that neither the American nor Nationalist forces provoked further conflict. ₅₆

With only a vague promise conveyed indirectly to them by the arch-capitalist John Foster Dulles to go by, the Chinese initially refused to meet the Americans in Warsaw, and continued to shell Quemoy and Matsu. Once, such obstinance would have led Dulles immediately to cancel the offer and seriously threaten war, but now things were different. Eisenhower had ordered Dulles to secure "concrete" negotiations with the Chinese and defuse the crisis, and that was what the Secretary of State was going to do. On September 11 Dulles met with the New Zealand ambassador Sir Leslie Munro, ostensibly to discuss his prime minister’s recent call for Taiwan to turn Quemoy and Matsu over to the Chinese. Rather than deporting Munro for his government’s public support of the communist position in a global Cold War crisis, Dulles told him that it had been "foolish" for Chiang to commit so much to Quemoy and Matsu. Therefore, the United States was interested in finding a compromise. "If we could get some assurance that the islands would not be attacked," Dulles told Munro, "then it might be possible to demilitarize them." ₅₇ The same day Dulles secured support for his position from the military: Secretary of Defense McElroy confirmed for Dulles that the Joint Chiefs had "reassessed" the importance of Quemoy and Matsu for the defense of Taiwan; the Chiefs would "probably conclude," McElroy stated, "that the islands were not required." ₅₈

On September 12 Dulles issued the coup de grace. He wrote a long letter to the British Prime minister Harold Macmillan, who had been communicating to Dulles his tremendous fear that a conflict over the tiny islands might lead to global thermonuclear war. In the letter Dulles reassured MacMillan, urging him to pay particular attention to Eisenhower’s recent statement that the crisis "will not be a thorn in the side of peace," and restating America’s determination to prevent Chiang from using the islands in a provocative way. It "could be said," Dulles continued, "that the presence of such large numbers of Nationalist forces is itself a kind of ‘provocation.’ " Dulles noted that the British had long advocated asking Moscow to restrain the People’s Republic. "The time is propitious," he said, "for such a move." ₅₉

Dulles had suggested to Lord Hood back on September 4 that the U.S. might be willing to demilitarize the islands in exchange for a Chinese agreement to stop shelling them, but Peking’s unwillingness to agree to commence negotiations in Warsaw indicated that this suggestion had not been sufficient. Therefore, Dulles conveyed a more explicit message to the Chinese via a New Zealand government that had recently sided with them, and then, to finish off any doubt, he told Macmillan that the United States was willing to regard Chiang’s troops on Quemoy and Matsu as a provocation to be removed, and asked him to relay this position to the Soviet Union for the purposes of international compromise. Dulles fulfilled Eisenhower’s order. The Beam–Chang talks in Warsaw commenced on September 15.

The onset of these talks signified the ending of the second offshore islands crisis, its "moving into a discussion stage." ₆₀ On one level, and certainly to an observer at the time, this could not have seemed so: over the rest of September the two diplomats conducted fruitless, bitter negotiations, and the Chinese artillery shelling had not yet stopped. In his September 11 radio and TV address Eisenhower compared the Chinese action against the two islands to Hitler’s late 1930s aggression and argued that similar appeasement by the West would make it likely that the United States would "have to fight a major war"; ₆₁ in a September 19 letter that Eisenhower found so objectionable that he sent it back with no reply, Khrushchev warned of a Soviet nuclear retaliation should the U.S. strike China with atomic weaponry. ₆₂

This belligerent rhetoric was posturing, bluster to obscure the quiet compromise. The Chinese obstinance in Warsaw, and Khrushchev’s hostile correspondence simply indicated, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence General Charles Cabell noted, that they "are relying on words rather than contemplated military action." Such was true of the American side too. ₆₃ By the end of the month the compromise became public. On September 30 Dulles announced at a press conference that if the Chinese stopped their bombardment of the offshore islands, even without formally signing a cease-fire, the United States would agree to the evacuation of American and Nationalist forces from the Quemoy–Matsu area. ₆₄ Fulfilling their end of the deal, on October 6 the Chinese announced a week-long suspension of their attack, which they extended until October 25, at which time they recommenced their shelling only on odd days of the calendar. This last move was a fitting ending to the second Quemoy–Matsu crisis. Once all sides realized that general war was not going to happen, they began to affect poses of toughness, like dogs snarling at one another across a fence they know is secure.

Among those disturbed by the snarling of mid-September were Prime Minister Macmillan and his foreign minister Selwyn Lloyd. Satisfied with their role in defusing the straits crisis, they wondered whether the United States had really been willing to wage nuclear war had the compromise failed and the Chinese invaded the islands. This had been Macmillan’s main line of questioning in his earlier letters to Dulles: was the defense of a remote stake such as the offshore islands indeed vital to the safety of the free world, and would the United States have defended them even if as a "prelude" to World War Three? From the British perspective Dulles’s conciliation indicated that perhaps such was not the case—that there was a discrepancy between declared U.S. policy and the real intentions of the Eisenhower administration. ₆₅ To learn more about the American position Lloyd came to the States on September 16.

Lloyd first met with Dulles, who informed him that the United States had indeed been willing to use small nuclear weapons to keep the offshore islands in nationalist hands. ₆₆ Alarmed, Lloyd saw Eisenhower on September 21. Eisenhower made it clear first of all that the decision to abandon the islands had been his idea: the West had to stand up for them to preserve morale in East Asia, but it "would be nice" if Chiang could find a way to evacuate them quietly. Lloyd, introducing a position that would become the redundant British line over the next year, suggested that the two superpowers meet for a Summit meeting.

Lloyd got to the main point. The British government and people were terrified by the idea of using nuclear weapons to hold Quemoy–Matsu. There "was going to be hell to pay," he predicted, if the Americans started a nuclear war with China. Eisenhower’s reply revealed a difference between him and Dulles. If "nuclear weapons were going to be used," he said, "it would have to be an all-out effort rather than a local effort." Moreover, he "did not plan to use nuclear weapons in any local situation at the present time." Lloyd told the president that he was "very relieved" to hear this. ₆₇

The second straits crisis revealed many things. Most interesting, perhaps, was the conciliatory diplomacy of John Foster Dulles: no brinksman was he over Quemoy and Matsu. Indeed, looked at in broad terms Dulles’s actions in this crisis were, in the end, a series of retreats. In reaction to the Chinese bombardment of the islands, the United States engaged in no substantial military retaliation, took the lead in seeking negotiations, forced Chiang to accept a humiliating compromise, was the first nation to announce the deal publicly, and tolerated the Chinese resumption of alternate-day bombardment passively.

Also clear was Dulles’s subordination to Eisenhower. The adversarial role that Dulles often took when debating military policy with the president was not to be found during the straits crisis, at least not after the crucial meeting at Newport on September 4. Dulles followed Eisenhower’s order of September 6 to the letter, engaging in forms of conciliation that were probably unpleasant for him.

A question that still remained, the one that seemed to have prompted Lloyd’s visit, was whether this conciliatory American behavior reflected a general policy, or was only particular to the crisis over Quemoy and Matsu. By refusing to commit to a concrete military plan, resisting subordinates’ calls for confrontation, and quietly jumping at a chance to negotiate, Eisenhower and Dulles had evaded war in a way that might be used in the future. Dulles’s and Eisenhower’s different replies to Lloyd’s question suggested that this matter was not yet resolved—that Quemoy–Matsu, at least from the Secretary of State’s point of view, was an exception not to be repeated. This question would be answered more clearly over the next several months.

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Endnotes

Note 1: For a general, comprehensive account of the enormous political reaction to the Soviet satellite, see Robert Divine, The Sputnik Challenge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Back.

Note 2: On the influence of Air Force and aviation industry figures on Democrats in Washington, see John Prados, The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Intelligence and Russian Military Strength (New York: Dial Press, 1982), p. 58. Back.

Note 3: Quoted in John Newhouse, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age (New York: Knopf, 1989), p. 117. Back.

Note 4: Divine, The Sputnik Challenge pp. 68–83; memorandum of October 10, 1957 White House conference, FRUS 19 (1955–57): 599–600. Back.

Note 5: On Sputnik and the 1960 elections, see Herbert Parmet, Richard Nixon and his America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1990), pp. 433–34. Back.

Note 6: Roman, in chapter 3 of Eisenhower and the Missile Gap argues that Eisenhower and his main advisers, including John Foster Dulles, did not worry seriously about altering the policy of massive retaliation before the fall of 1957. It was only the Soviet satellite that caused Eisenhower and Dulles to rewrite nuclear policy, which they did, he asserts, in 1958 and 1959. To contend that American nuclear policy did not substantially change before 1958, Roman must disregard a mountain of contrary documentary evidence (to take only an obvious example: NSC–5707/8) as well as the work of several prominent historians (such as McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival, chapters 6 and 7, Marc Trachtenberg, History and Strategy, chapters 3 and 4, John Lewis Gaddis, "The Unexpected John Foster Dulles,"chapter 5 of The United States and the End of the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), and Richard Immerman, "Confessions of an Eisenhower Revisionist"). I am at a loss as to why Professor Roman, in making this argument, does not try to refute this evidence or scholarship. Back.

Note 7: Eisenhower received this information from E. V. Murphree of the Defense Department in a January 11, 1957 NSC discussion. See FRUS 19 (1955–57): 402, and DDC 1996, number 1039. Back.

Note 8: Memorandum of November 4, 1957 White House conference, FRUS 19 (1955–57): 621. Back.

Note 9: As Dockrill writes: "Despite, or because of, the Sputnik shock, the New Look remained the kernel of Eisenhower’s national security policy." Eisenhower’s New Look, p. 208. Back.

Note 10: The commission’s chairman was H. Rowan Gaither of the Ford Foundation. Back.

Note 11: Memorandum of November 4, 1957 conference with Eisenhower, FRUS 19 (1955–57): 620. Back.

Note 12: Ibid., pp. 621–22; also see Gaddis, Strategies, p. 185, and Rosenberg, "The Origins of Overkill," pp. 46–48. Back.

Note 13: Memorandum of November 12, 1957 NSC meeting, FRUS 19 (1955–57): 674–75. Back.

Note 14: Memorandum of January 16, 1958 NSC meeting, FRUS 3 (1958–60), "National Security Affairs; Arms Control," p. 16. Back.

Note 15: This fundamental problem of course led eventually to the development of independent nuclear forces in Europe and the French departure from NATO command. On the emergence of this problem during the Eisenhower administration, see especially Wampler, "Eisenhower, NATO, and Nuclear Weapons, esp. pp. 175–78; and Trachtenberg, History and Strategy, chapter 4. Back.

Note 16: Dulles speech recorded in editorial note, FRUS 19 (1955–57): 526. Back.

Note 17: Dulles, "Challenge and Response in United States Policy," Foreign Affairs 36 (October 1957): 31, 33. Back.

Note 18: Dulles seemed quite well aware that this argument was in conflict with Eisenhower’s policy. On August 21 he sent a draft of the article to the president, together with a note predicting that it "would prove rather easy reading except perhaps for the portion dealing with nuclear weapons." August 21, 1957 letter from Dulles to Eisenhower, Ann Whitman File, Dulles–Herter series, Box 9, DDEL. Back.

Note 19: Memorandum of January 3, 1958 conversation with Dulles, FRUS 3 (1958–60), p. 3. Back.

Note 20: Memorandum of March 20, 1958 NSC discussion, ibid., pp. 51–56. Back.

Note 21: Memorandum of March 27, 1958 NSC discussion, DDC 1990, number 311, pp. 6–7. Back.

Note 22: Dulles memorandum of April 1, 1958 conversation with Eisenhower, DDC 1989, number 3430, pp. 1–2. Dulles did not relate Eisenhower’s response in this memorandum. Back.

Note 23: Memorandum of April 7, 1958 study group meeting, FRUS 3 (1958–60): 63; April 7, 1957 memorandum from Cutler to McElroy, ibid., pp. 65–68; paper presented by the Special Assistant on National Security Affairs [Cutler], ibid., p. 78. Back.

Note 24: An idea that closely resembled, it is interesting to note, an argument Henry Kissinger made in his 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper, 1957). See chapter 7, below. Back.

Note 25: Memorandum of May 1, 1958 NSC meeting, FRUS 3 (1958–60): 82–85. Back.

Note 26: Ibid., pp. 85–88. Another record of this meeting can be found in the National Security Archives, Berlin Crisis collection, document 115, (hereafter in this form: NSA, number 115) p. 10. On the May 1 meeting also see Rosenberg, "The Origins of Overkill," p. 54. Back.

Note 27: May 1, 1958 NSC discussion, NSA number 115, p. 12. Back.

Note 28: Ibid., p. 12. Back.

Note 29: Memorandum of July 24, 1958 NSC meeting, FRUS 3 (1958–60): 129. The day before this meeting Dulles had written a personal letter to Eisenhower, once again demanding that "we need to apply ourselves urgently to finding an alternative strategic concept." DDC 1988, number 2219. Having once again failed to budge the president, Dulles used the excuse of describing policy as "in flux" to avoid formally disagreeing with Eisenhower. Indeed, in the July 23 letter Dulles noted that he did not "want to air my misgivings on this sensitive subject before the council." Back.

Note 30: Memorandum of August 12, 1958 conference with Eisenhower, Ann Whitman Files, DDE Diary Series, Box 35, DDEL, pp. 1–2; August 13, 1958 NSC memorandum, NSC–5723, DDC 1990, number 348. Back.

Note 31: August 13, 1958 memorandum from Smith to Herter, FRUS 19 (1958–60), microfiche supplement (hereafter in this form: FRUS 19 (1958–60), supplement), pp. 1–2. Back.

Note 32: Memorandum of August 14, 1958 NSC discussion, Ann Whitman Files, DDE Diary series, Box 35, pp. 1–2. Back.

Note 33: Memorandum of August 15, 1958 meeting between Department of State and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, FRUS 19 (1958–60), supplement, pp. 1–2. Back.

Note 34: Dulles statement reprinted in August 23, 1958 telegram from Dulles to Drumright, ibid., p. 2. Back.

Note 35: Memorandum of August 25, 1958 White House meeting, FRUS 19 (1958–60), "China," p. 74. Back.

Note 36: Memorandum of August 25, 1958 conference with Eisenhower, FRUS 19 (1958–60), supplement, pp. 1–3. Back.

Note 37: August 24, 1958 telegram from Drumright to Department of State, FRUS 19 (1958–60): 72; August 27, 1958 telegram from Drumright to Department of State, ibid., pp. 83–86. Back.

Note 38: August 28, 1958 Naval Message from U.S. Command in Taiwan to CINCPAC (Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific, Admiral Harry D. Felt), FRUS 19 (1958–60), supplement, p. 2; August 29, 1958 Naval Message from Seventh Fleet commander, ibid. Back.

Note 39: Dulles’s absence during this week makes it hard to see how Appu K. Soman could argue that Dulles "played the key role in the administration’s handling of the crisis." See " ‘Who’s Daddy’ in the Taiwan Strait? The Offshore Islands Crisis of 1958," Journal of American–East Asian Relations 3 (Winter 1994): 374. Back.

Note 40: August 31, 1958 letter from Parsons to Dulles, FRUS 19 (1958–60), supplement, p. 3. Back.

Note 41: August 25, 1958 White House meeting, p. 74; August 26, 1958 telegram from JCS to Commander-in-Chief Pacific Admiral Harry D. Felt, pp. 75–6; and August 29, 1958 White House meeting, p. 97, FRUS 19 (1958–60). On the Chinese threat, see Parsons to Dulles, cited directly above in note 40. Eisenhower’s statement during the meeting on the 29th is the most obvious refutation of Soman’s claim that Eisenhower was ready to wage nuclear war to defend Quemoy–Matsu. See " ‘Who’s Daddy’ in the Taiwan Strait?" pp. 383–86, 395. Back.

Note 42: The Chinese warning is reprinted in Eisenhower, Waging Peace, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1965) appendix P, p. 694. Back.

Note 43: Memorandum of August 27, 1958 conference with Eisenhower, DDC 1993, number 3541, p. 2. Back.

Note 44: August 27, 1958 Press Conference, reprinted in Public Papers of the President 1958 (Washington, 1959), pp. 640–42. Back.

Note 45: August 31, 1958 telegram from Drumright to Department of State, FRUS 19 (1958–60): 107. Back.

Note 46: September 1, 1958 telegram from Eisenhower to Chiang, FRUS 19 (1958–60), supplement. Back.

Note 47: September 1, 1958 telephone conversation between Dulles and Eisenhower, FRUS 19 (1958–60): 113. Back.

Note 48: Memorandum of September 2, 1958 meeting, ibid., pp. 118–121. Back.

Note 49: Undated Dulles memorandum, ibid., p. 133. Back.

Note 50: Memorandum of September 4, 1958 conference with Eisenhower, Ann Whitman Files, DDE Diary series, box 36, p. 1. Dulles’s somewhat different account of this conference, Memorandum of September 4, 1958 conversation with Eisenhower, is in FRUS 19 (1958–60), supplement. Back.

Note 51: See the special National Intelligence Estimate, completed August 26, 1958, in FRUS 19 (1958–60): 81–82; September 3, 1958 memorandum from Smith to Dulles, ibid., p. 124. Back.

Note 52: Memorandum of September 4, 1958 Dulles conversation, cited in note 50 above. Back.

Note 53: Ibid. Back.

Note 54: "Authorized Statement by the Secretary of State," September 4, 1958, Public Papers of the President, p. 688; Memorandum of September 4, 1958 conference, cited in note 50 above. General Goodpaster’s account of this conversation at Newport, and especially the arrangement between Dulles and Eisenhower on issuing the public announcement, is uncharacteristically murky. Interestingly, the most detailed account of the Newport conversations available is in Eisenhower’s memoirs. The president wrote at length about this meeting, going as far as to include an excerpt of Dulles’s memorandum in an appendix (pp. 691–93). In his account Eisenhower falsely portrays himself as determined to stand up to the Chinese with nuclear war. Back.

Note 55: Dulles memorandum of September 4, 1958 conversation with Lord Hood, FRUS 19 (1958–60), supplement. By protesting far too much that this proposal was planned at all, Dulles makes it obvious that it was indeed planned quite deliberately. "I said that this was just an offhand idea which had not been studied or staffed. The foregoing was said in the course of a very casual conversation. (I would not have attached importance to it had it not been that Lord Hood had reported it to Macmillan and the idea features largely in Macmillan’s reply.)" I believe that Dulles and Eisenhower secretly agreed to take this compromising approach in Newport. Back.

Note 56: September 6, 1958 memorandum of conference with Eisenhower, FRUS 19 (1958–60), supplement; Marshall Green memorandum of September 7, 1958 telephone conversation with Dulles, ibid.; Dulles September 8, 1958 telegram to Beam, ibid.; Dulles September 8, 1958 telegram to Drumright, ibid., pp. 1–2. Back.

Note 57: Memorandum of September 11, 1958 conversation with Dulles and Sir Leslie Munro, FRUS 19 (1958–60) supplement, p. 2. Back.

Note 58: Memorandum of September 11, 1958 conversation between McElroy and Dulles, ibid., p. 1. Back.

Note 59: September 12, 1958 letter from Dulles to Macmillan, DDC 1997, number 755, pp. 2–3. Back.

Note 60: This is how Smith described it, in a September 10, 1958 memorandum to Dulles, FRUS 19 (1958–60), supplement. Back.

Note 61: Public Papers, pp. 695–97. Back.

Note 62: Khrushchev’s letter, a reply to Eisenhower’s of September 12, is reprinted in FRUS 19 (1958–60): 231–38. For Eisenhower’s decision to reject Khrushchev’s note, see Editorial Note, ibid., pp. 247–48. Back.

Note 63: Memorandum of September 20, 1958 conversation, ibid., p. 243. On September 11, the same day he publicly compared Quemoy and Matsu to the Sudetenland, Eisenhower said privately to his Secretary of Defense that he "was trying to find a way in which a strong country can conciliate. It is not adequate simply to say that we will stand on Quemoy and Matsu. We must move beyond that." See editorial note of September 11, 1958 conference between Secretary of Defense McElroy and Eisenhower, ibid., p. 161. Back.

Note 64: Dulles’s announcement was recorded in Department of State Bulletin 39 (October 20, 1958), pp. 597–604. The Secretary of State also said that a Nationalist return to the mainland was not an immediate American objective but instead a "highly hypothetical matter." Back.

Note 65: Undated letter from Macmillan to Dulles, DDC 1992, number 220. Back.

Note 66: Qiang Zhai, The Dragon, the Lion, and the Eagle: Chinese/British/American Relations, 1949–58 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1992), p. 194. Back.

Note 67: Memorandum of September 21, 1958 conversation with the president, DDC 1991, number 845, pp. 1, 5–6. This conversation is also recorded in FRUS 19 (1958–60): 249–52. For an account of this meeting from Lloyd’s perspective, see Zhai, The Dragon, the Lion, and the Eagle, p. 194. Back.