The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War

Harvard Cold War Studies

by Kathryn C. Statler (Editor), Andrew L. Johns

In the United States, the Cold War is often remembered as a two-power struggle. However, increasing globalization during that time meant nations across the world became involved in the conflict. During the Eisenhower administration, American officials struggled to respond to the dual threats of communism and nationalism as decolonization swept through the Third World during the 1950s and changed the nature of the Cold War and U.S. foreign relations with those nations. As the Cold War increasingly became a zero-sum game, the Third World became the primary battleground in the ideological, economic, and political struggle between Washington and Moscow. Indeed, as these essays demonstrate, the Eisenhower administration placed an extremely high priority on victory in the Third World and seemed willing to go to virtually any length to ensure that countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas remained aligned with the forces of democracy and capitalism. Relying on formerly unavailable archival research from many nations, the scholars in this volume systematically assess the impact of the globalizing Cold War and the process of decolonization on the Eisenhower administration's foreign policy. Intended for diplomatic historians and readers interested in the Cold War, this book is a major contribution to an under-studied aspect of that conflict.

Contributions by: Michael R. Adamson, David L. Anderson, Nathan J. Citino, Peter L. Hahn, Andrew L. Johns, Robert J. McMahon, James H. Meriwether, Kenneth A. Osgood, Chester J. Pach Jr., Jason C. Parker, John Prados, James F. Siekmeier, Kathryn C. Statler, and Yi Sun

Genres: History

326 pages, Hardcover

First published July 28, 2006

Reviews

[Stefania Dzhanamova · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of essays by different authors about the Eisenhower administration's foreign policy in the Third World. I can hardly offer any intelligent criticism of the ones discussing Eisenhower's conduct in the Arab world, for I am not at all well-read on the subject. The authors who had chosen the 1950s unbridled CIA activities as their topic of research have alas not done those important events and their consequences as much justice as Dulles biographers Stephen Kinzer and Allen Dulles, for example. The same goes for the analyses of the character, motivations, and convictions of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Thus, there is only one essay that, in my opinion, deserves recognition – Kathryn C. Statler's Building a Colony: South Vietnam and the Eisenhower Administration, 1953-1961. I read Statler's Replacing France some time ago and found her to be a terrific storyteller with an outstanding grasp of foreign policy. Her essay for this collection, which she is an editor of, did not disappoint me either. Statler skillfully traces the transition from France to America during the Eisenhower administration and examines how deep American involvement in Vietnam really was in the 1950s.

According to her, the beginning of the transition from the French to the Americans began in earnest in 1950. Chinese recognition of North Vietnam and the French imperialists' success in portraying their war effort as an anti-Communist crusade led to the first tentative American steps toward intervention. The efforts to coax the United States into seeing the French cause in Indochina as an allied one were deliberate and longstanding. During numerous meetings from 1950 to 1953, French officials slowly but surely persuaded Washington of Indochina’s importance as a bulwark for western defense. French success in convincing the United States not only to aid the French war effort but also to support a common Southeast Asian defense policy encouraged future American involvement in the region.

By 1953, the American commitment to the French war effort had become linked to European defense issues. Because Paris claimed that it could not win the war in Indochina and build up the European Defense Community simultaneously, the incoming Eisenhower administration agreed to supply additional aid for Indochina with the assumption that France would ratify the EDC, which was the American's government top priority. The French never ratified it, but as a result of continued American aid for Indochina throughout 1953–1954, Washington found itself increasingly engaged there. In particular, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s decision to informally link the EDC and Indochina and his refusal to consider alternatives to the EDC obliged Washington to fulfill French demands for more aid and accelerated the administration’s financial and political commitment to prevent a Communist takeover in Indochina.

As Statler observes, the Indochina-EDC connection demonstrated the dangers of tying one policy goal to another. Both Paris and Washington thought they had linked policies in a way that would allow them maximum leverage against one another, but in the end, both became entangled in their own cleverness. French leaders thought that by portraying their effort in Indochina as part of the greater battle against Communism would guarantee them American support. While the French did obtain this support, they also acquired increased American meddling in Indochina, though. The United States, in implicitly tying American aid to Indochina to the ratification of the EDC, lost the EDC but ended up more committed to the Indochina effort. In addition, argues Statler, the United States could have insisted on Vietnamese independence prior to the Geneva Conference if it had been a little less concerned with the impact such insistence would have on the EDC’s prospects for ratification by the French.

The author calls the year 1954 a critical one for American involvement in Vietnam. In spring, the Eisenhower administration came close to intervening militarily at Dien Bien Phu in through united action. While the Americans did not intervene, and agreement between France and the Viet Minh at Geneva to temporarily divide Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel ended military hostilities between, the American refusal to sign the Geneva agreements left opportunities for future American involvement in Indochina.

In other words, until Geneva, the American commitment to Vietnam was partial, but after Geneva, this commitment would become full-blown as America became primarily responsible for South Vietnam’s future. Because Eisenhower and Dulles saw the Geneva Accords as a setback for the non-Communist world, they decided that the United States needed to play a larger role in South Vietnam to ensure that it would not be lost. Washington thus demanded more control of military, strategic, economic, and administrative matters. According to Statler, the officials of the Eisenhower administration enjoyed reducing the French presence in Indochina because that allowed them to rebuild South Vietnam from the foundation. The Diem government offered the best chance for doing so, Washington believed.

Following Geneva, Paris intended to maintain a significant amount of influence in Vietnamese affairs, but American support of Diem created a number of difficulties for the French. Franco-American conflict heightened once again as the two countries disagreed over Diem’s future as a viable South Vietnamese leader. The French wanted to develop a joint Franco-American policy toward South Vietnam to preserve Western interests there. However, the Eisenhower administration did not want to depend on French policy. In the end, Diem, with some help from the Americans, succeeded in keeping himself in power, which resulted in little French presence in South Vietnam from then on. 

Interestingly, Statler speculates that had it been anyone but Diem in charge of South Vietnam, the French would have persuaded a different South Vietnamese government to begin negotiations with the Viet Minh, maintained a presence in the north, and perhaps even overseen the 1956 elections. She does not take this idea beyond speculation, though. 

By 1956, French influence in Indochina had greatly diminished as the United States superseded France politically, militarily, economically, and administratively. The final Franco-American "battle" was French resistance to American attempts to take over various French educational institutions in Indochina, but American agencies made significant gains. In an effort to counter-balance the United States, the Diem government slowly began to work toward better relations with France, but the American presence still pervaded almost every aspect of South Vietnamese life. During Ike's second term, the administration understood more clearly the importance of using economic and cultural aid as tools in the Cold War and shifted from military defense assistance to programs for nation-building. Thus, although the amount of aid to Vietnam went down from 1955 to 1961, the numbers and activities of official and unofficial Americans in South Vietnam climbed steadily.

All in all, I recommend THE EISENHOWER ADMINISTRATION, THE THIRD WORLD, AND THE GLOBALIZATION OF THE COLD WAR mainly for Statler's essay. I have yet to read a more concise, well-argumented, and graspable account of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration's policy toward South Vietnam. I highly recommend it.