Eisenhower+Foreign+Policy

Although lacking in political experience, General Dwight David Eisenhower was more than qualitifed, and ready to take on the crucial times and the overloading hours in the office as President of the United States. While leading the Allied forces to victory over Germany, had dealt with such prickly figures as Charles de Gaulle, General Bernard Montgomery and, he often found himself between the deep and more important discussions between President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill over policy matters. Thus his understanding of international affairs in a very dangerous world was bolstered by his wartime experience. Since tensions had begun to strike between the Soviet union and the West even before World War II was over, by the time Eisenhower took office in January 1953, the Cold War had been underway for almost ten years. Anti-Soviet feelings ran deep; the McCarthy era was in full swing, and Americans, enjoying products that had sprung from the technologies and events during World War II, and dealing with civil rights issues, or not completely focused on foreign affairs. Those who have examined the political career of Eisenhower have generally agreed that he was a shrewd observer of the world scene, but sometimes naïve in his understanding of American political practice. He seemed to some to be working too hard to appease the political forces with which he had limited experience, even while he was guiding American policy with respect to the rest of the world in a measured fashion. No American politician could ignore the threat posed by the Soviet Union, especially as the nuclear arms race began in to produce weapons of stupefying power, thousands of times more powerful than the bombs which had destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Asistijng in teh formulation of Eisenhower's foreign policy was Secretary of State was John Foster Dulles, who took a stern view of the Soviets and advocated a policy of massive retaliation, a policy which implied that any aggression by the Soviets would be met with huge force. Dulles's brother, Allen Dulles, was Director of Central Intelligence (CIA) and contributed to the administration's harsh view of the Soviets**R** [] []