Between 1953 and 1963, during the administrations of President Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy, the United States government transformed the way it formulated and executed foreign and defense policies. These changes gave the White House its own foreign policy staff, in the form of the National Security Council, and increased the powers of the Secretary of Defense. Most of these changes began under Eisenhower in the 1950s. Eisenhower, however, delayed making several key reforms despite the recommendations of his staff. He believed some reforms were unnecessary and remained ambivalent about others. Moreover, he wanted to avoid sending complex reorganization legislation through Congress, which Eisenhower feared would allow legislators to interfere in matters of the Executive Branch. Democrats in the 1960 presidential election capitalized on the failure to push through these reforms. The Democratic attacks proved remarkably compelling to a bipartisan audience. Kennedy used this bipartisan agreement to enact many of the reforms Eisenhower had ignored. The motivating factor for many of these decisions was not merely an attempt by either President to concentrate power in the White House, it was a belief that the post-1945 world was so unstable that only giving the White House unfettered access and oversight of the levers of power could ensure the safety of the nation. This work merges Diplomatic History with the field of American Political Development to examine these dramatic changes to the structure of the US government. Historians traditionally have examined these Kennedy era administrative changes in isolation. Studying them together with those that took place under Eisenhower yields a more complete picture of how the national security state developed. Despite Eisenhower’s reluctance to adopt some of the reforms embraced by Kennedy, both presidents believed that major reforms were necessary. Any sound analysis of the ways the contemporary United States makes its foreign and defense policies requires understanding momentous changes that took place during the transformational period of the early Cold War

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Jack M. Holl / Donald J. Mrozek / As president, Dwight Eisenhower believed that nuclear weapons, both fission and fusion, were permissible and desirable assets to help protect U.S. national security against the threat of international communism. He championed the beneficent role played by nuclear weapons, including both civilian and military uses, and he lauded the simultaneous and multi-pronged use of the atom for peace and for war. Eisenhower's assessment of the role and value of nuclear technology was profound, sincere, and pragmatic, but also simplistic, uneven, and perilous. He desired to make nuclear weapons as available, useful, and ordinary for purposes of national security as other revolutionary military technology from the past, such as the tank or the airplane. He also planned to exploit nuclear technology for a variety of peaceful, civilian applications that he also believed could contribute to national strength. However, Eisenhower did not possess a systematic view of national security in the nuclear age as some scholars have argued. Rather, Eisenhower approached the question of how to defend national security through nuclear weapons with an array of disparate ideas and programs which worked simultaneously toward sometimes divergent objectives that were unified only by a simple conception of national strength. In this effort, Eisenhower occasionally pursued what might seem to be conflicting initiatives, but nonetheless consistently advanced his view that strength through nuclear technology was possible, necessary, and sustainable. Because he believed nuclear technology effectively served his goal to defend national security through strength, Eisenhower sought to reverse the perception that nuclear weapons were inherently dangerous by advocating steadily and consistently for the proper and acceptable use of nuclear technology to contribute to the safety of the republic. He conceived policies such as the New Look, massive retaliation, Project Plowshare, and Atoms for Peace in part to convince the American public and the international community of the U.S.'s genuine desire for peace as Eisenhower simultaneously entrenched atomic and thermonuclear weapons into the American national conscience. Through his efforts, Eisenhower made nuclear weapons and nuclear technology ordinary, abundant, and indispensable to U.S. national security in the twentieth century.

No description available.

En octobre 1957, un événement historique vient bouleverser les États-Unis : le lancement de Sputnik, premier satellite artificiel, propulsé par les Soviétiques. Un mois plus tard, un deuxième satellite est mis en orbite par l'URSS tandis que les États-Unis tirent de l'arrière. Ces lancements créent toute une commotion à laquelle le président de l'époque, Dwight D. Eisenhower, doit faire face. 'Le président Eisenhower et la crise du satellite Sputnik, entre discours et réalité' est une analyse historique des discours du président Eisenhower entourant les lancements des deux premiers Sputniks. Après un survol historique des principaux événements liés au sujet qui nous intéresse, un état de la question permet notamment de cerner comment l'attitude du président Eisenhower envers la crise Sputnik est traitée dans l'historiographie. Puis, une analyse des discours émis entre janvier 1957 et avril 1958 trace les grandes lignes du discours présidentiel d'Eisenhower. Ensuite, ce sont aux discours des mois d'octobre et de novembre 1957, de même qu'à leur réception dans cinq grands journaux des États-Unis, que nous nous intéressons. Ainsi, nous voyons comment ces discours s'insèrent dans la rhétorique propre à Eisenhower, les distinctions à faire entre les discours émis à la suite du lancement du premier Sputnik puis du second, de même que la relation entre réaction médiatique et administration présidentielle. Dans ce mémoire, nous nous interrogeons principalement sur les discours entourant les lancements des Sputniks. Ainsi, nous vérifions si ceux-ci s'intègrent de façon cohérente au discours plus large d'Eisenhower. De plus, nous nous demandons s'il existe une différence notable entre les discours émis à la suite de chacun des lancements des deux premiers Sputniks, de même que sur leur efficacité à convaincre l'opinion publique. Pour y arriver, des dizaines de discours présidentiels et d'articles de journaux ont été minutieusement étudiés. Au terme de ce travail, nous en arrivons à la conclusion que les discours émis à la suite des lancements des Sputnik I et II s'inscrivent en continuité avec le discours général du président, mais que d'importantes distinctions sont à faire entre les deux. En effet, Eisenhower passe de sa figure publique de bon père de famille à celle de leader qui passe à l'action sur la question des satellites spatiaux entre les mois d'octobre et de novembre 1957. Malgré ce changement d'attitude, il semble que l'opinion publique ne soit pas totalement convaincue et que les conflits entourant la crise Sputnik animeront la présidence d'Eisenhower jusqu'à la fin de son mandat en 1961. L'originalité de notre approche repose essentiellement sur l'accent qui est mis sur les discours liés aux lancements des Sputniks. Nous nous posons des questions et y apportons des réponses qui se distinguent de ce qui est paru jusqu' ici dans l'historiographie. De plus, l'importance de l'analyse du discours d'Eisenhower qui est intégrée à ce mémoire est aussi particulière et tranche à l'occasion avec les principales conclusions tirées dans l'historiographie. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Eisenhower, Sputnik, Spoutnik, discours, missile gap, satellite, NASA, espace

Strategic upheavals, such as the emergence or disappearance of geopolitical threats or radical technological changes, generate profound uncertainty and intense debate about a state’s future strategy. How do decisionmakers reexamine and revise strategy amidst these upheavals? Existing theories of strategic change recognize the significance of upheavals, but raise questions about the mechanisms by which decisionmakers embrace or discard new ideas about strategy. contend that understanding strategic change requires attention to narratives––stories about the past and present of international politics that suggest legitimate pathways for future action. I develop a theory of narrative emergence, positing that after upheavals, national security elites compete to mobilize support for their vision of future policy. They use public and private debates to legitimate their positions and build domestic coalitions. I identify four rhetorical strategies––persuasion, rhetorical coercion, co-optation, and transgression––that have different effects in mobilizing or demobilizing coalitions. If one coalition builds cross-cutting support, this can entrench their rhetoric in public discourse over time as part of a dominant narrative that shapes subsequent strategy debates through constraining and enabling effects. I evaluate this theory in the context of two cases of strategic upheaval in the United States, focusing on the puzzles of U.S. nuclear strategy: the arrival of the atomic age and the achievement of strategic parity between the U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals. In the first case, I use qualitative and text analysis to track the rise of a dominant narrative about nuclear weapons during the early Cold War. In this contradictory narrative which I label “Waging Deterrence,” the bomb was both an unusable, revolutionary deterrent and an essential tool for fighting and winning the next war. I draw on archival sources to trace the emergence of this narrative during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, showing this narrative was not predetermined, but contingent on domestic debates as speakers––Presidents, civilian advisors, military elites, and others––used rhetorical strategies in public and private to co-opt and silence opponents. This narrative constrained the possibilities for strategic revision during the later Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. In the second case, parity’s mutual vulnerability upended this narrative; narratives remained unsettled until the Carter administration, where domestic legitimation contests facilitated the return of Waging Deterrence to justify competitive nuclear postures that had a lasting impact on U.S. nuclear strategy. The project offers a novel mechanism to understand strategic change and highlights the discursive and domestic politics of nuclear strategy, showing that foundational U.S. deterrence concepts emerged in part from domestic legitimation contests that rendered other options illegitimate. It also offers insights into policy debates about the future of nuclear and grand strategy amidst contemporary upheavals, suggesting contested processes of narrative construction will be central to shaping future strategy.

Dwight D. Eisenhower has been criticized as an anti-intellectual by scholars such as Richard Hofstadter. Eisenhower’s tenure as president of Columbia University was one segment of his career he was particularly criticized for because of his non-traditional approach to education there. This paper examines Eisenhower’s time at Columbia to explain how anti-intellectualism played into his university administration. It explains how his personality and general outlook came to clash with the intellectual environment of Columbia especially in the wake of the faculty revolt against former Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler. It argues that Eisenhower utilized the Columbia institution to promote a Cold War educational agenda, which often belittled Columbia intellectuals and their scholarly pursuits. However, this paper also counter-argues that Eisenhower, despite accusations of anti-intellectualism, was an academically interested man who never engaged in true suppression of free thought despite pressure from McCarthyite influences in American government, media and business.

This thesis explores how the campaign for the The Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways was a product of the 1950s military-industrial complex, which developed from a nationalist project seeking to confirm American exceptionalism during the early Cold War.

Honors Project--Smith College, Northampton, Mass., 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 88-89).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Phoenix Seminary, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 304-307).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Phoenix Seminary, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 304-307).