Multinationals and the 'middle way': The Eisenhower administration, American multinational enterprise, and United States foreign policy

The administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower labored mightily to solidify the new international order created at the end of the Second World War. At the heart of this new order lay a global economic framework based upon capitalist principles and U.S. leadership. With the other major powers in disarray, American policymakers saw an unparalleled opportunity to globalize long-standing American goals such as interdependence, freer trade, economic development, and anticommunism. Although Eisenhower's predecessor initiated the new order, the former general believed that the pressures of the Cold War could stymie progress and undermine existing political and economic arrangements within the United States.;Eisenhower feared that the Cold War would overtax the U.S. economy, especially if the conflict's military burdens could not be controlled. By emphasizing military containment, the U.S. government might well plunge unwittingly into economic statism while encroaching upon long-established traditions and liberties. The president sought to find a "middle way" to avoid statism while waging the Cold War and solidifying the new order. To this end, his administration employed a panoply of traditional and unorthodox diplomatic and military instruments.;One such instrument was the multinational enterprise. Globetrotting giants such as General Electric, International Telephone and Telegraph, and United Fruit embodied the free, interdependent spirit of the new order, and, in Eisenhower's view, they could help strengthen this order and contain communism. The administration encouraged multinationals to participate in a variety of activities, ranging from strategic stockpiling and espionage to propaganda and economic development. Using multinationals, Eisenhower hoped to implement an aggressive containment strategy abroad while limiting the impact of the Cold War at home.;Eisenhower's strategy ran into serious difficulties during the 1950s. The Cold War exerted unceasing pressure on the "middle way," and multinationals failed to live up to the president's ideals. The Eisenhower administration went a long way toward solidifying the new economic order, but, ultimately, it could not keep the Cold War from encroaching on an older American order.