Fighting the Cold War at Home 755close relations with the Soviet Union. After he nego-
tiated a trade agreement with the Soviet Union in
February 1960, which enabled the Russians to
obtain Cuban sugar at bargain rates, the United
States retaliated by prohibiting the importation of
Cuban sugar into America.
Khrushchev then announced that if the United
States intervened in Cuba, he would defend the coun-
try with atomic weapons. “The Monroe Doctrine has
outlived its time,” Khrushchev warned. Shortly before
the end of his second term, Eisenhower broke off
diplomatic relations with Cuba.
Fighting the Cold War at Home
The looming Soviet threat brought the Cold War
closer to the American people than ever before. Such
fears provided public support for increased spending
on defense. In 1955 Eisenhower worried that a Soviet
nuclear attack would plunge American cities into
chaos. The roads out of threatened cities “would be
the breeder of a deadly congestion within hours of an
attack,” he noted. He therefore backed a federally-
funded highway system; this would not only facilitate
the evacuation of cities but would also allow the army
to mobilize more rapidly. The National Interstate and
Defense Highway Act of 1956 became the largest
public works project in the nation’s history.
The Soviet Union’s success in building atomic
and hydrogen bombs, and especially in launching an
orbiting satellite before the United States, also
prompted Eisenhower to initiate a sweeping reform
of the nation’s schools. “The defense of the nation
depends upon the mastery of modern techniques
developed from complex scientific principles,” he
declared. In 1958 he signed the National Defense
Education Act. It provided federal aid to promote
study of science, mathematics and foreign languages
in large, comprehensive (and sometimes anonymous)
high schools.This interchange near Seattle was part of the interstate highway system advanced by Eisenhower to facilitate both military transports and
civilian evacuations.