Eisenhower, Macmillan and Allied Unity, 1957–1961 Also by E
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Eisenhower, Macmillan and Allied Unity, 1957–1961 Also by E. Bruce Geelhoed CHARLES E. WILSON AND CONTROVERSY AT THE PENTAGON, 1953 to 1957 Also by Anthony O. Edmonds THE WAR IN VIETNAM Also by Anthony O. Edmonds and E. Bruce Geelhoed BALL STATE UNIVERSITY: 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 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-39542-2 ISBN 978-0-230-59680-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230596801 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 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 10987654321 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 War by 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.