American support, Chiang Kai-shek’s Taiwan
continued to occupy China’s seat on the Security
Council of the United Nations. Meanwhile, in
south-east Asia, SEATO defined the limits of
Chinese and communist expansion, and in the
Middle East the Baghdad Pact created a military
barrier along the frontiers between Turkey, Iran
and the Soviet Union supported by Iraq and
Pakistan.
The future of Germany was a critical problem for
both the East and the West, as well as for the
Germans. Was there any real possibility of disen-
gagement and agreement, of German unification
on conditions of neutrality? Soviet leaders from
Stalin to Khrushchev strove to achieve this objec-
tive as long as the Soviet regime in East Germany
was preserved. The Soviet Union above all
attempted to prevent West German rearmament
and integration in NATO. To this end Khrush-
chev worked hard to relax tension in Europe.
Eisenhower asked for proof of Soviet sincerity, for
example the conclusion of an Austrian peace
treaty, which had been fruitlessly discussed for
years. A few weeks later, to the West’s astonish-
ment, Khrushchev agreed and the Austrian Treaty
was signed in May 1955. But the subsequent
Geneva Conference in July of that year made no
real progress on the more important German
question. Eisenhower rejected the principle,
insisted on by Khrushchev, that a unified
Germany could not join NATO. Khrushchev in
turn refused to accept Eisenhower’s ‘open skies’
proposal, under which the Americans could
inspect Soviet military sites and vice versa. Nor
was the nuclear-arms race halted. But Khrushchev
and Eisenhower did agree to conduct relations in
a conciliatory spirit – the so-called ‘spirit of
Geneva’. The first stage of detente had begun.
But it did not last long: there were warlike
exchanges during the Suez Crisis of 1956; rela-
tions were strained by the Eisenhower Doctrine
in the Middle East; and new tensions arose when
in November 1958 the mercurial Soviet leader
threatened that the Soviet Union would conclude
a peace treaty with East Germany and end
Western rights in Berlin. But Khrushchev
remained personally friendly, inviting Eisenhower
to visit the Soviet Union. Eisenhower responded
by indicating to Khrushchev that, provided
Western interests were preserved, he was ready to
negotiate over Berlin and German unification and
over an atomic test-ban treaty. Test-ban negotia-
tions were accordingly started in Geneva, and
Khrushchev postponed the unilateral alteration of
Berlin’s status. Eisenhower wanted to crown his
presidency as it drew to its close by establishing
a firm basis for world peace. John Foster Dulles’s
last illness had reduced his influence, though he
was careful to warn Eisenhower against adopting
any policy that smacked of appeasement. In May
1959 Dulles died and was replaced as secretary of
state by Christian Herter.
Detente seemed assured when Khrushchev
accepted Eisenhower’s invitation to visit the US in
September 1959. It was an unprecedented event
for a Kremlin leader to come to see for himself the
country perceived by the Soviet Union as the
leader of the anti-communist capitalist bloc of
powers. The visit was a success, though Khrush-
chev tried not to show that he was impressed by
the achievements of capitalism. He and Eisen-
hower agreed to hold a summit meeting in Paris
the following May, after which Eisenhower and his
family were to visit the Soviet Union.
Eisenhower’s hopes were soon to be dashed by
Khrushchev. The US had since 1955 been sending
spy planes over the Soviet Union at such high alti-
tudes that the Russians could not bring them
down. But just before the Paris summit was to
take place in May 1960 they at last succeeded in
shooting one down with a missile. Believing the
pilot dead and the plane destroyed, the US admin-
istration impaled itself on the falsehood that the
plane – the U-2 – was a weather-research plane
that had strayed off course. The Russians then tri-
umphantly displayed the captured pilot together
with incontrovertible evidence that the plane was
spying. Khrushchev, who had arrived by this time
for the conference in Paris, demanded an apol-
ogy and a statement from Eisenhower that the
spying missions had been conducted without
the president’s knowledge. They had not. But the
president was not to be caught in a lie, nor trapped
in a position where he had to admit publicly that
he did not know what was going on. So, unable to
1
THE EISENHOWER YEARS 499
