No description available.

The Pentagon career of Charles E. Wilson, President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense from 1953-1957, is a neglected, yet important, field of study for studentsof the Eisenhower Presidency. Therefore, a study of Wilson's controversial tenure as Secretary of Defense is necessary for at least three reasons. First, Wilson served as Secretary of Defense for four and a half years, more than twice as long as any of his predecessors. Only Robert McNamara, who administered the Defense Department from 1961-1967, served longer than Wilson as the chief Pentagon official. Furthermore, Wilson became the Defense Department's civilian leader at a time when the agency was in its infancy.. His longevity as Secretary of Defense enabled him to make a significant impact upon the government's largest operation.Second, Wilson left a considerable store of personal papers, which are conveniently arranged at Anderson College in Anderson, Indiana. A serious examination of those materials gives one an additional measure of insight into the workings and concern of the Eisenhower Administration.Third, Wilson deserves study because he was a major figure in an important Administration. He has, however, been overlooked by virtually every chronicler of the Eisenhower Presidency. The prevailing view of Wilson maintains that he was an able administrator in the automobile industry, but woefully miscast as a political figure. That interpretation may not be totally wrong, but it is incomplete.More significantly, a study of Wilson enables the historian to challenge two views of the orthodox interpretation of the Eisenhower years. The first view maintains that the figures in the Eisenhower Cabinet were dull, unimaginative representatives of the business community. Indeed, one writer characterized the President and his advisers as "the bland leading the bland." That statement is misleading, at least in reference to Wilson.Charles E. Wilson was a wealthy industrialist, but he was hardly bland. He was many things; robust, blunt, energetic, sometimes simplistic, sometimes politically unskillful, but never bland. Furthermore, he possessed a down-to-earth intelligence which enabled him to direct the government's largest agency for almost a half-decade.A second view of the orthodox interpretation contends that the Eisenhower years were largely devoid of partisanship and a sense of political purpose. That, too, is misleading, especially regarding the issue of national defense. An examination of the debates over defense policy during those years reveals a high degree of partisanship with Wilson Persistently defending the Administration programs while the political opposition consistently sought to alter them. Furthermore, Wilson and his Democratic critics in the Senate were hardy rivals, with influential Democrats calling for Wilson's resignation at regular intervals. Wilson's encounters with Richard Russell, Lyndon B. Johnson, Stuart Symington and others may have lacked the drama of Harry Truman's lambasting of the "do-nothing, good-for-nothing" 80th congress during the 1948 presidential campaign. Yet the encounter between Wilson and his Senate critics were genuinely partisan and both Administration and Congress fought tooth-and-nail for political victory.I should like to state the purpose of this study. It is not an attempt at a biography of Wilson or even a summary of his career at the Pentagon. Instead, I have tried to examine the theme of conflict between Wilson and his Senate critics. The emphasis, and hopefully not the bias, is on Wilson's role as the Secretary of Defense in advocating his policies before skeptical groups of Senators. Hopefully, the study will succeed in a larger objective of shedding additional light on the inner workings of the Eisenhower Administration.

In order to explain presidential decisions to use force, a model is developed that incorporates three distinct decision-making environments. The results indicate the president is responsive not only to domestic and international environments, but also to the resource evaluation environment. The evidence here demonstrates that while these two environments are important the president can't use force arbitrarily; rather, his evaluation of resources available for the use of force can limit his ability to engage the military during crisis situations.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Many authors, critics, and policy makers question the presence of a unified grand strategy with which the United States has striven toward in recent years. This is a topic worthy of pursuit since such a strategy is responsible for identifying how this nation intends to accomplish its goals. This thesis defines what, if any, grand strategy the United States is currently pursuing. It observes several prominent theories of grand strategy, from both the realist and liberal perspectives. This analysis is set in context of historical grand strategy decisions since World War II and uses the framework of Taiwan as the case study. The thesis then compares the three theories, Selective Engagement, Offshore Balancing, and the Liberal Milieu and their recommendations to real-world activities of the United States with a focus primarily on military deployments and national objectives. The study reveals that of the three in question, the Liberal Milieu grand strategy is the only one that is supported by ongoing deployments in the East Asia region as well as by the national rhetoric which define our policy objectives.