humiliate Eisenhower, Khrushchev broke off the
summit meeting before it had got properly
started. Not that the U-2 issue was a new one: the
Russians had known about these missions for
three years. In any case, satellites from both sides
would soon be able to pass unimpeded over any
region they chose. Possibly Khrushchev had sim-
ply decided that there was no point in dealing with
a president in the last months of his administra-
tion, and that it would be necessary to postpone
serious negotiations.
Eisenhower had dominated the Western side
in global international relations for eight years.
His greatest achievement was a negative one: to
have resisted all temptation to use atomic weapons
and to start a war against China, as some of
his advisers had urged. Nor had he panicked his
country into seeking excessive nuclear-weapons
leadership over the USSR. And although he
wanted genuine disarmament, it is difficult to
see how he could have halted the arms race,
given the circumstances and the fears prevailing
at the time. In his memorable ‘farewell’ address
he alerted his countrymen to the power of the
industrial–military establishment, which had
grown up as a result of the Cold War, and warned
of the ‘potential for the disastrous rise of mis-
placed power’, which should never be allowed to
‘endanger our liberties or democratic processes’.
Both the armaments industry and the military, he
believed, would always demand more than was
necessary.
It was fortunate for the world that a president
of unchallengeable military prestige was in a posi-
tion to control a military establishment prone to
advocating, at times of crisis, policies that might
have endangered the peace of the world in the
nuclear age.