Eisenhower, Macmillan and Allied Unity, 1957–1961

228 Pages·2003·1.19 MB·English

by  E. Bruce Geelhoed

Eisenhower, Macmillan and Allied Unity, 1957–1961
Also by E. Bruce Geelhoed
CHARLESE.WILSONANDCONTROVERSYATTHEPENTAGON, 1953 to 1957
Also by Anthony O. Edmonds
THEWARINVIETNAM
Also by Anthony O. Edmonds and E. Bruce Geelhoed
BALLSTATEUNIVERSITY: An Interpretive History
Eisenhower, Macmillan
and Allied Unity,
1957–1961
E. Bruce Geelhoed
Director,Center for Middletown Studies and Professor of History
Ball State University
and
Anthony O. Edmonds
Professor of History
Ball State University
© E.Bruce Geelhoed and Anthony O.Edmonds 2003
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-0-333-64227-6
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First published 2003 by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Geelhoed,E.Bruce,1948–
Eisenhower,Macmillan,and allied unity,1957–1961 / E.Bruce
Geelhoed,Anthony O.Edmonds.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Eisenhower,Dwight D.(Dwight David),1890–1969. 2. Macmillan,
Harold,1894– 3. United States – Foreign relations – Great Britain. 4.
Great Britain – Foreign relations – United States. 5. United States –
Foreign relations – 1953–1961. 6. Cold War – Diplomatic history. I.
Edmonds,Anthony O. II. Title.
E183.8.G7 G275 2002
327.73041¢09¢045 – dc21
2002028755
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
Contents
Preface vi
Acknowledgements ix
Prologue x
1 1957: Bermuda, Washington, Paris 1
2 1958: Arms Control, Washington, Lebanon 31
3 1959: Moscow, Washington, London, Paris 61
4 1960: Washington and Paris 97
Epilogue 132
Notes and References 158
Bibliography 186
Index 191
v
Preface
This is an old-fashioned book. It is not based on any overarching
theoretical construct. It is not Marxist or Wallersteinian or modernist or
postmodernist. Race, class, and gender do not figure much in what we
say, except that almost all of our major actors are white males, as was
overwhelmingly, if sadly, the case in Western international relations in
the late 1950s and early 1960s. In some ways this work harks back to the
old days of diplomatic history; our primary sources are diaries, memoirs,
official government documents, and, especially, letters. We suppose that
our use of the correspondence between Dwight D. Eisenhower and
Harold Macmillan makes us the opposite of Stimsonian gentlemen, since
we are reading other people’s mail – with great profit.
If we have a central theme it is that personality and friendships do
matter in international relations, especially in British–American rela-
tions. Put simply, the fact that Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harold
Macmillan had known each other since the early days of World War II
made a difference in the way that they and their advisors conducted
foreign policy. Of course, there were tensions and disagreements
and huffy complaints in private, but by and large Eisenhower and
Macmillan got along famously. Especially crucial was their largely
successful effort to reconstruct the Anglo-American “special relation-
ship” after it had almost been shattered by the Suez crisis of 1956.
We focus on the period from 1957 to 1961, years that span
Eisenhower’s second presidential term and Macmillan’s first four years
as prime minister. A brief prologue deals with the origins of the friend-
ship between the two leaders, their approaches to conducting foreign
policy, and some historiography related to the British–American “special
relationship.” The four major chapters that follow each cover one year
– 1957, 1958, 1959, and 1960, through the collapse of the Paris Summit
Conference in May 1960. A brief epilogue discusses the last seven
months of the “Ike–Mac” relationship, which ended with the inaugu-
ration of John F. Kennedy.
Scholars in the field will note that many international problems are
not covered here. Cyprus and Far Eastern concerns, for example, receive
virtually no mention. Because of space limitations, we decided to focus
on major issues that both nations saw as crucial to their partnership.
Those tended to center on Western Europe, the NATO alliance, and the
vi
Preface vii
Middle East as they related to the Cold War conflict with the Soviet
Union. We do a great deal with defense, disarmament, the Berlin
question, and, above all, the concept of summitry. We conclude that
the Eisenhower–Macmillan partnership was largely successful, with one
major failure, of course: the collapse of the 1960 summit. And although
Britain remained a junior partner of the United States during the late
1950s, it was a functioning and highly respected partner. Anglo-
American relations, we argue, had come a long way since the dark days
of Suez, and much of that progress was the result of the close relation-
ship between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harold Macmillan.
As authors, we wish to thank a number of helpful people who assisted
in many parts of the project. The staff of the Eisenhower Library in
Abilene, Kansas, was vital to our work. We wish to thank Thomas
Branigar, archivist, and his colleagues for their assistance. Also, the staff
of the Modern Political Papers section of the Bodleian Library, Oxford
University, were enormously helpful – especially Helen Langley and
Colin Drake. John Crouch and Talitha Greathead, Oxford students who
are reading history at Harris Manchester College, gave up part of a
weekend to help go through documents in the Macmillan Papers. Marc
Geelhoed, graduate student at Indiana University, also researched mate-
rials relating to Harold Macmillan’s visits to Indiana in the University
Library at Indiana University.
The Honors College and Provost’s Office at Ball State University
helped to fund research terms in Great Britain, at various times, for both
of us. Bruce Geelhoed spent a term at Westminster College in 1987 and
Anthony Edmonds taught at Keele University in the autumn of 2001.
A numbers of Edmonds’s colleagues at Keele, especially John Dumbrell,
made helpful suggestions. A special thank you goes to Professor Peter
Boyle in the American Studies department at the University of
Nottingham, who read the entire manuscript and made a number of
helpful suggestions.
Bruce Geelhoed also wishes to thank the Naval Historical Foundation
for a post-doctoral research fellowship award which enabled him to
study the important aspects of naval history and defense policy in the
1950s as they related to this study. He especially wishes to thank Dean
Allard, now retired, and the staff of the Operational Archives at the
Naval Historical Center in Washington, DC for their assistance. He is
also grateful to the University of Pennsylvania, especially Professor
Martin Meyerson, president emeritus, for supporting research relating
to the role of Thomas S. Gates in many of the events mentioned in this
study.
viii Preface
Several of our students at Ball State University helped in the prepara-
tion of this study. Our thanks go out to Jennifer Anderson, Julie
Gibboney, and, most notably, Jeni Sumawati, for their expert assistance.
Finally, we wish to thank our wives and families for enduring yet
another lengthy book project. Deborah Geelhoed, loving wife of Bruce
Geelhoed for 31 years, and Joanne Edmonds, loving wife of Anthony
Edmonds for 38 years, patiently endured numerous stories about
Eisenhower and Macmillan as this project unfolded. We continue to
accumulate enormous debts to them for their patience, love, support,
and cooperation.
E. BRUCE GEELHOED
ANTHONY O. EDMONDS
Muncie, Indiana
Acknowledgements
The authors and publisher gratefully acknowledge permission to use the
following material:
From Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger. Copyright © 1994 by Henry A.
Kissinger (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
From Freedom From Fear: American People in Depression and Warby David
Kennedy, copyright © 1999 by David M. Kennedy. Used by permission
of Oxford University Press.
Reprinted with permission of Simon & Schuster from Eisenhower, vol. II.
The President by Stephen Ambrose. Copyright © 1984 by Ambrose-
Tubbs, Inc.
Reproduced from Harold Macmillan, vols I and II by Alistair Horne
(Copyright © Memsbury Press Ltd) by permission of Memsbury Press
Ltd for the services of Alistair Horne.
From Harold Macmillan, The Blast of War, 1939–1945(1968); Riding the
Storm 1956–1959 (1971); Pointing the Way, 1959–1961 (1972), by per-
mission of Pan Macmillan, London, UK.
From the Conservative Party Archives, Bodleian Library, Oxford, UK
for permission to quote from interview, Harold Macmillan by Robert
McKenzie, 1972, in “Correspondence with the Party Leader (and ex-
leader), Macmillan, 1963–1964.”
From Winthrop W. Aldrich, “The Suez Crisis: a Footnote to History,”
Foreign Affairs, vol. 45, no. 3 (April 1967), 541–52. Reprinted with
permission.
From Columbia University Oral History Research Office, Reminiscences
of Winthrop Aldrich, 16 October 1972.
From John Foster Dulles Oral History Collection, Seeley G. Mudd
Manuscript Library, Princeton University Library, Princeton University,
Nathan F. Twining Oral History. Published with permission of Princeton
University Library.
ix