In the 1960s, the Eisenhower years were ‘revisioned’ as a period of stagnation, instead of the era of fantastic prosperity and progress it really was.

Most people, even those like myself brought up on the absurd “goofing and golfing” image of Dwight D. Eisenhower, now recognize that he was an exceptionally fine president. In my opinion, he was a great president, whose excellence has exceeded that of any of his successors. 

That is despite the fact that much that is still said about Eisenhower and his administration simply regurgitates the silly ideas about his policies entertained at the time, and not just by liberals. National Review, for example, was not especially friendly to Eisenhower in the 1950s. 

One such falsehood is the idea that Eisenhower was hostile to desegregation in the South. That seems to have been a product of Chief Justice Earl Warren’s personal hatred for the man who had destroyed his hopes of becoming president and who, after leaving the Oval Office, was critical of many of the more dubious later decisions of the Warren Court. It was under Eisenhower that Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. acted as a friend of the Court in Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Warren court desegregated public schools. Eisenhower’s journal, a letter to his close friend Everett Hazlett, and remarks he made during the Little Rock crisis in 1957 all show that he regarded desegregation as just. He thought, however, that it might have been wiser and would have evoked less opposition had it begun in higher education rather than lower down. 

It’s true that Ike was understandably unenthusiastic about the rulings of the Warren court that undermined anti-crime efforts, such as Mapp v. Ohio, which seriously restricted the use of evidence in criminal cases, and Miranda v. Arizona, which hampered police interrogations. Whatever merits of these rulings hold in the protection of the innocent, there is no doubt they paved the way for our current nightmare of a police force hamstrung by overbearing legal oversight.

Though a military man, Eisenhower did not have a typical “military mind.” Unlike some in high command—notably his subordinates when he was Supreme Allied Commander, Bernard Montgomery and George Patton—he was securely in control of his ego. Although his contemporary critics often accused him of being politically naïve, he had gained a good deal of experience with Washington politics when he served as an aide to Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the time MacArthur was chief of staff of the Army, and later as a key planner under General George C. Marshall before taking command of the North African invasion. In his wartime dealings with the French and Italians, he often showed more sense than his superiors in Washington and London. 

Eisenhower was a conservative, though not a rigid ideologue. On individual issues, notably the environment (or “conservation,” as it was usually described in the 1950s) as well a civil rights, he was a reformer. A true fiscal conservative, he was willing to expand some New Deal programs, like Social Security, as long as they rested on a sound fiscal basis. He sometimes referred to himself as a fiscal conservative but a “social liberal.” But that last phrase had a different connotation in the 1950s; later social changes disgusted him. 

Like many others, Ike had grave misgivings about welfare and its consequences; he even favored sterilizing any woman who had a second illegitimate baby while on welfare. He pared various expenditures and terminated some of the giant agencies created during the Great Depression, such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a giant government investment bank that Ike deemed unnecessary in the postwar economic climate, and the Federal Security Agency, an amorphous jumble  of subagencies performing wildly differing functions. While unable to avoid deficits, he reduced them considerably. His economic policies were not perfect, however. He reacted too slowly to the recession of 1957. But, on the whole, his record on the economy was very satisfactory and far better than that of many of his successors. 

In the post-Sputnik furor and through the 1960s, the Eisenhower years were “revisioned” as a period of stagnation in which little good happened, instead of the era of fantastic prosperity and progress it really was—a strong indicator, perhaps, of just how out of touch with reality opinion formers were. 

Eisenhower may have had an affair with the British female soldier who served as his chauffeur during World War II, Kay Summersby. But the valleys of any ethical lapses on his part were higher than the peaks of most who followed him into the White House. It is worth noting that even the “golfing and goofing” school of his contemporary critics never doubted his basic integrity. If anything, he left the impression that however inadequate an American president might be in other respects, it was unlikely that anyone who reached the Oval Office would be a bad man. 

Unfortunately, that impression was not a good guide for understanding many of the men who followed him. 

Misconceptions about Eisenhower’s foreign policy and about his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, remain common, though many were refuted long ago, especially by the historian John Lewis Gaddis. Examples include the idea that the Eisenhower administration was hostile to nationalism in the colonial world; he supported—but did not like—the Chinese Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek. Another myth was that Ike believed Communist governments were “monolithic,” and that his administration had no relations with the Chinese Communist government (that falsehood was promoted by President Nixon and Henry Kissinger to inflate their diplomatic achievements with China).

Left-liberals and leftists distort the meaning of Ike’s comments on the “military-industrial complex,” and so do libertarians, who also find the realities of the world incompatible with their ideological fixations.

In fact, the Eisenhower administration developed informal relations with the Chinese Communists beginning in 1955, first through Switzerland and then through Warsaw. Eisenhower and Dulles were not admirers of Chiang Kai-shek or the other authoritarians the Cold War forced them to treat as allies. Not only did they not believe that Communism was monolithic, but they pursued their own strategy to try to divide the Soviets and the Chinese, replacing the failed “wedge” strategy followed by the Truman administration up to the Chinese intervention in the Korean War. 

Probably the most damning charge against Eisenhower, given the trauma of and obsession with the Second Indochina War (it was also known as the Vietnam War), is that Eisenhower was responsible for the “domino theory,” which allegedly trapped the United States into that disastrous war. The domino theory was the idea that if Indochina, or just Vietnam, fell under Communist control, the rest of Southeast Asia would follow. But this idea was probably a British invention and was already alive in the Truman administration. Ike, in 1954, merely invented the phrase. Within a few weeks, he was careful to qualify, in public, the actual extent to which a Communist victory in South Vietnam would be fatal for the rest of the region.

This exactly paralleled Eisenhower and Dulles’ secret evaluation within the National Security Council. As Dulles commented in November 1954, the countries of Indochina were not really that important. And he noted that what happened in Vietnam was no model for what would happen elsewhere. It was a special case, if only because, as he put it, the French had messed up things so thoroughly. 

Oddly, it is rarely noted that Eisenhower’s appointees to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, notably Army Chief of Staff General George Decker, opposed any major military intervention in Southeast Asia. Those who replaced them under Kennedy took a very different line. 

It is a curious fact that Ike’s only public utterance that is at all well-known is his Farewell Address of Jan. 17, 1961, the “Military-Industrial Complex” speech, which has been almost totally misrepresented, quoted out of context, and even turned upside down. Left-liberals and leftists distort the meaning of Ike’s comments on the “military-industrial complex,” and so do libertarians, who also find the realities of the world incompatible with their ideological fixations.

Glenn Greenwald, in September 2020, gave a succinct example of such distortions.  He wrote on Twitter: “[Eisenhower] had 16 minutes on TV to warn Americans of what he thought they most needed to know, and used it primarily to emphasize the dangers of Pentagon growth, weapons spending and the threats of Endless War.” 

In some conspiratorial interpretations, Eisenhower’s speech was a mysterious example of a president escaping from under the thumb of the “military-industrial complex,” which, some hold, murdered his successor for opposing its machinations.

That sort of thing may have Ike spinning in his grave. Let’s examine just how little resemblance this common misinterpretation has to do with what Eisenhower said or intended, and how what he actually said was quite compatible with what he said and did earlier as a lifelong
military man. 

Beginning with his best wishes for his successor, and the country, he noted the warlike history of the 20th century and stressed that:

American leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.…

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face an ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint, the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle—with liberty at stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.… 

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Ike warned that the World War II emergency mobilization and conversion of domestic industry to wartime ends would no longer be adequate. We could “no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of proportions,” he said. 

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment is new in the American experience;” he said, and its influence was felt everywhere. He continued:

We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Later he mentioned the necessity of “maintaining balance” over time. 

Eisenhower spoke of other matters, but the part of the speech reproduced above was the core of his farewell and the part that has been distorted out of recognition. 

Note that he did not say that the “military-industrial complex” actually had or was exerting unwanted influence—just that there was a danger it might and that it must be watched. Most importantly, he believed that that complex was a necessary development, “imperative” in the context of a Cold War of indefinite duration against an evil enemy. He was arguing that the U.S. could not go back to its prewar domestic industrial tranquility; a strong defense had to be maintained over time without a radical variation of effort and expenditure.

Crucially, Ike never once mentioned  “endless war,” and certainly not in the way that foolish phrase is now invoked, but bluntly recognized that the Cold War then had no end in sight. Not long before he left office, he warned that defense costs were rising and that the “Cold War could easily last another forty to fifty years.”

Contrary to the implications some have read into this one speech, Eisenhower was a hard-liner on the Cold War, but one well aware of its costs and dangers. Should things go really badly, he even thought it might be necessary to wage a preventive war against the Soviets! Of course, all his day-to-day policies were aimed at avoiding ever having to make such a terrible decision, and avoiding, too, the United States being turned into a “garrison state.” In April 1953, he had glumly described the enormous burden of armaments as a “theft” of resources from human needs. 

Eisenhower’s whole post-Korean War defense policy was based on replacing, or at least greatly modifying, the Truman administration’s 1950 concentration on a massive military buildup aimed at heading off the danger of a Soviet attack in the near future, which they expected to peak in 1954. Ike believed in a lesser, though still great, effort—to be maintained indefinitely. Truman’s Korean buildup was the costliest of the Cold War in terms of military expenditures as part of the federal budget and GDP. This level of expenditure had already proven politically and economically impossible to sustain by 1952. 

Still, when necessary, Eisenhower embarked on new programs, notably the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched missiles. By injecting new energy into ICBM development, it was his administration that headed off the development of a “missile gap” with the Soviets. This missile gap had been wrongly forecast in the late 1950s and became an issue in the 1960 presidential contest between JFK and Nixon; there was no missile gap then, but one probably would have developed without Eisenhower’s leadership, given the poky pace and low priority given missile work by Truman.

The developments initiated by the Eisenhower administration were in some ways the turning point of the Cold War, at least militarily, as they largely assured that the balance of strategic weapons would remain in favor of the West for the rest of the struggle. 

Eisenhower was also tough enough to deal successfully with Nikita Khrushchev, the most imaginative and risk-taking Soviet leader, even during the period when Soviet superiority appeared to be an imminent threat. During 1958, especially, which Eisenhower once described as the worst year of his life, he faced a still relatively unified Communist world at the peak of its prestige and had to deal with three major crises: in the Middle East, the Taiwan Straits, and Berlin; and at least two lesser ones: the Indonesian civil war and the Cuban revolution. None of these was quite as serious as the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, but 1958 was the most crisis-ridden year of the whole Cold War. 

It was, too, the year in which Eisenhower was weakest politically at home. Worries about the Cold War, and about his health, even led some liberal magazines to urge him to resign. That would have meant elevating his vice president, Richard Nixon—in retrospect, a rather peculiar recommendation for liberals. Fortunately, Eisenhower ignored this advice.

The tone and timing of Eisenhower’s farewell remarks were strongly influenced by other recent experiences. Sputnik I went into space in 1957, following a successful Soviet ICBM test that preceded that of the United States, kicking off the “space race” and putting new demands on the Eisenhower administration. Notably, this involved buying more first-generation ICBMs than he’d planned, some of which were not too reliable and had only a limited operational life. Other proposals of the time were even worse; some were silly attempts to shoehorn old technologies into the nuclear age. For example, Eisenhower had to shoot down proposals for nuclear-powered blimps and 16-inch nuclear shells for battleship guns. 

Eisenhower had been annoyed by Kennedy’s unscrupulous revival of the “missile gap,” which his administration had anticipated and prevented. Just before his Farewell Speech, Eisenhower and Air Force General Bernard Schriever, who was in charge of the U.S. ICBM program, sharply dismissed the danger of the gap. 

Contrary to what is widely supposed, it was President Kennedy who proved to be the best friend of the military-industrial complex, embarking on a much larger military buildup than his predecessor.

Contrary to what is widely supposed, it was President Kennedy who proved to be the best friend of the military-industrial complex, embarking on a much larger military buildup than his predecessor. Among other things, the Kennedy administration programmed a strategic missile force 75 percent bigger than Eisenhower had considered necessary, at a time when estimates of its Soviets counterpart had been cut back. The size and composition of the planned force were not determined by strategic calculations, but by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s political estimate of what could be accepted by the rival armed services and sold to Congress. 

Kennedy’s behavior in office was a classic example of the phenomenon, described by James Burnham in Suicide of the West, of the willingness to throw money at weapons as a substitute for rational strategy and actual toughness. The inimitable Joe Biden gave us an example of something even more remarkable, with his discovery that aid to Ukraine and Israel is really economically beneficial, because it enriches the U.S. defense industry and employs Americans. Of course, they cost other businesses, not to mention ordinary Americans. 

While Eisenhower’s remarks about the military-industrial complex can only be fully understood within the context of its time, they remain entirely reasonable even in ours. It is wise to keep an eye on its potential for “unwarranted influence” and “misplaced power,” for it remains a necessary evil.