tance of Syngman Rhee, who did not want to end
the war short of unification on South Korea’s
terms, a truce was concluded. The fighting
stopped and Korea was effectively partitioned.
The Eisenhower administration on 10 October
signed another security treaty, with the Republic
of Korea (South Korea), to provide a guarantee
of joint defence if an attack was renewed from the
north. The US also promised economic aid to
restore the south. But the truce did not prove a
preliminary step towards unification, despite
endless negotiations. South Korean ‘democracy’,
moreover, was a mockery during Syngman Rhee’s
eight years of rule and even after he was driven
from power in 1960. The link with the West and
the US in particular, however, provided the basis
for South Korea’s economic miracle of the suc-
ceeding three decades.
Until his death in May 1959, Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles exerted a commanding influ-
ence over US foreign policy during the two
Eisenhower administrations, especially over its
style and tone. A Presbyterian layman, a lawyer
with experience of international affairs, he repre-
sented a tradition in US foreign policy of assert-
ing that morality and principle must underlie all
America’s dealings in the world. He criticised
Truman’s policy of containment of communism,
insisting that it was no more than a negative reac-
tion to an evil. The communists should be made
to give up what they had illegally seized; the
Soviet Union’s sphere of influence should be
rolled back in Eastern and central Europe; there
could be no accommodation with Russia. Nor did
Dulles shrink from threatening the use of nuclear
weapons in defence of the free world. He con-
demned neutralism in the Third World – as he
saw it, the choice was between two kinds of soci-
eties, the good and the evil. In meeting the com-
munist challenge Dulles came to be regarded as
a ‘Cold War warrior’, as his rhetoric and deliber-
ate brinkmanship in threatening war proved to be
thoroughly alarming. It was verbal deterrence to
back up nuclear deterrence. Dulles was skilful,
tough and predictable. In a world of upheaval and
uncertainty the policies he advocated – the cre-
ation of defensive alliances in Asia and Europe –
contributed to the stabilisation of the status quo,
except in Indo-China. For all the talk of rolling
back communism, caution prevailed when unrest
spread through the Soviet satellites of East
Germany, Poland and Hungary; Dulles, though,
must share some blame for encouraging revolt
and then denying all material assistance. Eisen-
hower presented the more conciliatory side of
American diplomacy. Their partnership was for-
midable and, on the whole, successful.
Reducing American armed forces in Korea fitted
in with Eisenhower’s and Dulles’s perception of
how best to meet the threat of world communism.
While they recognised that there were national dif-
ferences within the communist alliance that might
be advantageously exploited, they also subscribed
to the view that communism was a coherent and
dangerous ideology, and that the Kremlin was
coordinating a policy of global thrusts wherever
the West was weak. That coordination might not
be complete, but Eisenhower and Dulles believed
that all the Kremlin’s policies were purposeful and
could be seen at work in what appeared to be unre-
lated events: the Korean invasion, the Huk activi-
ties in the Philippines, the determined effort to
overrun Vietnam, the attempted subversion of
Laos, Cambodia and Burma, the well-nigh success-
ful attempt to take over Iran, the exploitation of
the trouble spot of Trieste, and the penetration
attempted in Guatemala.
Dulles concluded that the communist leaders
knew that their system could not survive side by
side with the ‘free world’; consequently they had
no alternative but to try to destroy freedom in the
world. The death of Stalin in March 1953, he
thought, had only made Soviet policies towards
the rest of the world more subtle, without alter-
ing their essential goal. Dulles urged that a policy
of maximum pressure on Russia’s allies was more
likely to move them away from the Soviet Union
than a competition for their favour. Communist
China in particular was recognised as a potentially
unstable Soviet ally.
America’s China policy was one of unrelenting
hostility. In his first State of the Union message to
Congress, Eisenhower declared that the Seventh
Fleet ‘would no longer be employed to shield
communist China’. This was, however, pure verbal
hostility, since the prospect of the aged Chiang
1
THE EISENHOWER YEARS 491
