The carrot and the leash: Eisenhower, Syngman Rhee, and the dual containment of Korea (Dwight D. Eisenhower)

This dissertation analyzes the maneuvers for control and influence between the Americans and the South Koreans for military stability, political attention, and economic assistance in the seven-year period after the Korean War. Based on multi-archival research in the Republic of Korea and the United States, it is argued that Syngman Rhee resorted to the diplomacy of feigned collapse and manipulated weakness to maximize American attention and assistance. In its efforts to put the containment policy to practice, the Eisenhower administration resorted to soft and hard measures to contain its unpredictable Korean ally. Rhee's skillful exploitation of Korea's symbolic---and later geopolitical---prestige as an anti-colonial but anti-Communist Asian nation helped to redefine the rules of allied relations. Analyzing how a small nation influenced a global power underlines the minor power's resourceful strategy of exploiting its weakness and illuminates the complexities of America's predominance in the early years of the Cold War. From Korean threat of unilateral military action to American plans for Rhee's overthrow, from manufactured national collapse to warnings of suspension of aid, the U.S.-Korean relations in the years after the Korean War serves as a test-case for the direction and character of trends in the post-Cold War era.