The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s

by William I. Hitchcock

When the conference came to an end on July 23, the professional diplomats called it a failure. The U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, Charles Bohlen, thought it “the most disappointing and discouraging of all the summit meetings,” and he had been present at the great wartime meetings between Stalin and Roosevelt. There was “no real progress” on the major issues, and though the foreign ministers would continue to meet in the following months, they produced no breakthroughs. But for Eisenhower personally, the summit had been a magnificent success. Ike transformed a meeting he initially opposed into a triumph for his style of politics. He won a “moral victory,” the New York Times asserted, by stressing his desire for peace and making innovative proposals for arms inspections: “He represented what is best in this nation.”