Kai-shek successfully reconquering the mainland
from his Taiwanese base was no longer credible.
The following December an American–Nationalist
Chinese defence alliance was concluded, and in
January 1955 Eisenhower even secured the passing
of a joint resolution of Congress declaring that
American forces would be deployed, if necessary,
to protect from invasion two small islands, Matsu
and Quemoy, lying just off the Chinese mainland
and garrisoned by Chiang Kai-shek’s troops.
Warfare between the Nationalists and the commu-
nist Chinese was now confined to ineffectual ritual
shelling between the two islands and the mainland.
It seems extraordinary now that Eisenhower and
Dulles seriously considered war, even nuclear war,
with China in defence of the two small islands, but
for the Americans they were of enormous signifi-
cance. The containment barrier of Red China must
be drawn in the Pacific, restraining it from adven-
tures beyond its mainland coastline, otherwise it
could extend its attacks not only to Taiwan but to
Japan and even the Philippines. Communist China
became such a bogey that even Eisenhower’s cau-
tious judgement was affected. Dulles came to
regard the successful defence of Quemoy and
Matsu as his greatest triumph and believed that
brinkmanship had, here, saved the peace.
Eisenhower was following a broad spectrum of
policies to meet what he saw as the communist
global threat. As an experienced military com-
mander he was ready to employ all the weapons
and means at his disposal and rejected as naive the
view that spying or covert operations should be
avoided by the West on moral grounds, even
though the communist nations, unconstrained by
Western morality, made full use of them. He
recognised as well as anyone that a nuclear war
between the Soviet Union and the US could not
be won and would spell the end of civilisation.
That, however, was precisely why he was prepared
to ‘wage peace’ as he had waged war, using every
available method at his disposal.
The Central Intelligence Agency under Allen
Dulles, the brother of Foster Dulles, was now
given a much expanded secret role that could not
be publicly admitted. Subversion of foreign coun-
tries became a part of the CIA’s task even while
the State Department conducted normal diplo-
macy with them. Eisenhower authorised the over-
throw of the Mossadeq regime, which he believed
was opening Iran and its vital oil to Soviet pene-
tration. The president authorised the covert oper-
ation (codenamed Ajax) to restore the young
pro-Western Shah to power. In carrying out Ajax,
the CIA acted in concert with the Iranian army,
which arrested Mossadeq and restored the Shah
in August 1953.That same year Eisenhower and Dulles became
concerned about reports that Guatemala was ‘suc-
cumbing to communist infiltration’. Central
America was nearer home than Iran, and the
domino theory, though not enunciated by
Eisenhower until April 1954, was very much in
his mind. If Guatemala was allowed to fall to the
communists, then communism would spread to
its neighbours and perhaps even eventually to
Mexico and the borders of the US. This cata-
clysmic picture drove Eisenhower into action.
Colonel Jacobo Arbenz, president of Guatemala
since 1951, had embarked on a policy of eco-
nomic nationalism, taking over uncultivated land
and transport and docking facilities belonging to
American corporations, of which the most pow-
erful was the United Fruit Company of Boston.
Business interests were implacably opposed to
economic reform and, for the implementation of
his measures, Arbenz increasingly relied on com-
munists within the trade unions and government
departments who were certainly not interested in
seeking compromises with the US. The Soviet
Union saw an opportunity to fish in troubled
water. Eisenhower and Dulles concluded that the
international communist movement, by subvert-
ing Guatemala’s political and economic structure,
posed a threat to the hemisphere. Unable to per-
suade the Latin American states to take collective
action against Guatemala, the president called in
the CIA to organise the overthrow of Arbenz.
Exiles were armed in Honduras and with Ameri-
can air support drove Arbenz into exile, the pop-
ulation remaining passive and the Guatemalan
army staying on the sidelines.
Guatemala now fell under the control of a
right-wing military dictatorship. The mass of the
country’s poor were the principal losers in these