Eisenhower, New Look and Brinkmanship.

Eisenhower, New Look and Brinkmanship.

 In 1952 campaign for the presidency Eisenhower declared, “until the enslaved nations of the world have in the fullness of freedom the right to choose their own path, for then, and then only, can we say that there is a possible way of living peacefully and permanently with Communism in the world.”

Eisenhower’s campaign appealed to both sides of the politics. For the bold he hinted at a policy of liberation, while the cautious could be sure in his willingness to find a way to live peacefully with the Communists. John Foster Dulles, the Republican expert on foreign policy, author of the Japanese peace treaty and future Secretary of State was more clear in his beliefs than Eisenhower. He claimed that containment was a treadmill policy meaning the best it could do was keep everything the same until the U.S economy couldn't keep up where all ability to stop communism would fail. It was deemed too expensive and would not be a clear cut end to the conflict.  One focal point for the Republican campaign criticised containment as “negative, futile and immoral,” for it abandoned those people who were stuck under the rule of communism. The Republicans hinted at the idea of rolling back the communist policies. Rollback would come not only in East Europe but also in Asia. Eisenhower won the 1952 election by a landslide, this was because of many factors the best being the general’s enormous personal popularity. Corruption in the Truman administration and the McCarthy charges of Communist infiltration into the government also helped.. So did Eisenhower’s promise to go to Korea and end the war. But one of the major appeals of the Eisenhower-Dulles team was its rejection of containment. Eisenhower pledged to help those in communist countries comparing it to liberation of slaves in the nineteenth century.

The republicans where keen on the idea of cutting costs. To do this, however, was tricky. To the dismay of president Rhee, MacArthur  and many republicans Eisenhower signed an armistice to end the fighting in Korea, despite his statements made in his election campaign. Eisenhower used the term 'New look' to describe his military policy. Due to NSC-68 a large portion of the U.S budget went on military funding. To cut spending and taxing Eisenhower looked to cut the military budget but they still needed to pose a threat to the USSR. To do this Eisenhower turned to nuclear weapons. At this time the U.S.A was the leader in nuclear technology with the recent testing of the hydrogen bomb and Eisenhower was sure the USSR couldn't defend against it. Instead of spending billions on having a standing army allover the world, Eisenhower proposed they dictate global politics with the threat of superior nuclear power. This lead to the idea of Brinkmanship.

Because the U.S relied so heavily on the threat of atomic intervention, when there was a threat, they could only respond with nuclear weapons. People argued that with this approach a small matter could only be resorted by escalating it to nuclear Armageddon instead of conventional warfare. Brinkmanship was built on the expectation that an opposing force would crumble in the face of potential nuclear bombing even though they had no intention of doing so. The flaw in this was how the U.S would respond if their bluff was called.