| The literature on the period would lead one to believe that foreign-policy-making in the Eisenhower years was a one-man show. Traditionally the one man was thought to be John Foster Dulles. More recently, the "Eisenhower revisionists" have pushed Dulles aside in favor of the president. In fact, both interpretations are misleading. As the present study demonstrates, foreign policy under Eisenhower was very much an administration endeavor.;These three characteristics were manifestations of a fundamental approach to American foreign relations--an approach shaped most decisively by the shared experience of World War II. Eisenhower and his advisers were above all men concerned with getting a job done. They had no great hopes for remaking the world; the evil they saw was not going to disappear soon. The task they set for themselves--which they largely accomplished--was to keep things from getting worse. The consequence of this approach was a narrow and often unreflective, but steady and not unsuccessful, foreign policy.;Nine of Eisenhower's advisers, and their relations with the president, are described and analyzed here. A composite picture of the administration emerges, in which three characteristics stand out. The first is a cautious, flexible pragmatism, best exemplified by the administration's retreat from the rhetoric of the 1952 campaign to the reality of superpower politics in the nuclear age. The second is Eisenhower's continuing reliance on individuals he had known and worked with for many years, personal advisers whose talents he had seen tested during World War II. The third is an inability fully to reconcile American attitudes regarding the rectitude of the United States in its struggle against Communism, with the opinions of a world increasingly populated by ideological skeptics. |
