{"id":4352,"date":"2022-01-24T01:50:10","date_gmt":"2022-01-24T01:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/?page_id=4352"},"modified":"2026-04-07T12:47:36","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T12:47:36","slug":"brinksmanship-diplomacy","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/course-syllabus\/brinksmanship-diplomacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Brinkmanship Diplomacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER 15: Coexistence and Crises, 1953-1961<\/strong><\/h3>\n

“The Cold War remained the dominant fact of international life in the 1950s.\u00a0 It was still primarily a bipolar affair between the United States and the Soviet Union, with blocs massed around each of the central combatants.\u00a0 It resembled traditional power struggles between nation-states, but it was also a fierce ideological contest between two nations with diametrically opposed worldviews.\u00a0 The two sides saw each other as unremittingly hostile.\u00a0 They used every imaginable weapon: alliances, economic and military aid; espionage; covert operations including targeted assassinations; proxy wars; and an increasingly menacing arms race.” (Herring, 651)<\/p>\n

\n

Defining the New Look (1953-61)<\/h3>\n

Moving from symmetry to asymmetry<\/em><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Nuclear deterrence\n
      \n
    • \u201cMassive retaliation\u201d and \u201cbrinkmanship\u201d<\/li>\n
    • Conventional vs. nuclear weapons<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
    • Alliances\n
        \n
      • Multilateralism and unilateralism<\/li>\n
      • NATO (1949-55), SEATO (1954), CENTO (Baghdad Pact) (1955)<\/li>\n
      • Neutrality or non-aligned nations (Bandung Conference, 1955)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
      • Psychological warfare\n
          \n
        • \u201cLiberation\u201d and \u201crollback\u201d and \u201cOpen Skies\u201d<\/li>\n
        • Propaganda (Voice of America \/\/ Music USA –DJ Willis Conover and his B-29s)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
        • Covert operations (Doolittle Commission)\n
            \n
          • Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954)<\/li>\n
          • Other CIA actions (assassinations, election interference, front organizations)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
          • Negotiations\n
              \n
            • Death of Stalin (1953) and return of summit diplomacy<\/li>\n
            • Geneva (1955), Camp David (1959), Paris (1960)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

              KEY PLAYERS<\/strong><\/h3>\n

              John Foster Dulles (1888-1959)<\/h3>\n

              \"\"\u201cJohn Foster Dulles became the nation\u2019s chief diplomat almost as a matter of inheritance. \u00a0The grandson and namesake of late nineteenth-century secretary of state John W. Foster and nephew of Wilson\u2019s chief diplomat, Robert Lansing, he carried out his first diplomatic assignment at the age of thirty when he drafted the notorious reparations settlement at the Paris peace conference. \u00a0As a partner in the powerful New York law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, he joined the world of corporate wealth and international finance. \u00a0Like Woodrow Wilson the son of a Presbyterian minister, Dulles applied his intense religiosity to analyzing the tumultuous international politics of the 1930s and \u201940s. \u00a0A great bear of a man, stern and unsmiling, he could appear brusque, even rude \u2013\u2018the only bull who carried his own China closet with him,\u2019 Winston Churchill once snarled (and indeed Dulles was a collector of rare china). \u00a0An indefatigable worker, as secretary of state he set a record by traveling more than a half million miles. \u00a0Once viewed as the dominant force in policymaking in the Eisenhower years, he and the president in fact formed an extraordinarily close partnership based on mutual respect in which the latter was plainly preeminent. \u00a0Dulles\u2019s strident anti-Communist rhetoric and penchant for \u2018brinkmanship\u2019 stamped him as an ideologue and crusader. \u00a0He often served as a lightning rod for his boss. \u00a0He was also a cool pragmatist with a sophisticated view of the world and ample tactical skills.\u201d (Herring, chap. 15, p. 657)<\/p>\n

              KEY TERMS:\u00a0 Suez Crisis (1956) \/\/ U2 Affair (1960)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

              \u201cThe Suez affair was one of the most complex and dangerous of Cold War crises.\u00a0 Walking a tightrope over numerous conflicting forces, Eisenhower and Dulles did manage to avert war with the Soviet Union and limit the damage to relations with the Arab states.\u00a0 On the other hand, America\u2019s relations with its major allies plunged to their lowest point in years.\u00a0 Washington and London each believed they had been double-crossed.\u00a0 The British and French resented their humiliation at the hands of their ally.\u00a0 Eden and Dulles\u2019s mutual hatred deepened \u2013as \u2018tortuous as a wounded snake, with much less excuse,\u2019 an Eden still angry years later said of his by then deceased U.S. counterpart.\u00a0 An already volatile Middle East was further destabilized.\u00a0 Nasser remained in power \u2013a fact Dulles later privately lamented to the British.\u00a0 His noisy neutralism veered further eastward.\u00a0 Soviet premier Khrushchev mistakenly concluded that his rocket-rattling had carried the day \u2013those \u2018with the strongest nerves will be the winner,\u2019 he boasted \u2013thus emboldening him to further and even more reckless nuclear gambits.\u201d\u00a0 \u2013George Herring,\u00a0From Colony to Superpower,\u00a0<\/em>p. 676-77<\/p>\n

              \n

              Discussion Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n

                \n
              • Why was the Suez crisis so \u201ccomplex,\u201d as Herring put it?\u00a0 What were the key geopolitical factors that drove the confrontation?<\/li>\n
              • How does the Suez episode illustrate the alternative approach that US policymakers might have pursued during the 1950s \u2013away from anti-communism and toward anti-colonialism?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
                \n

                U2 Affair (1960)<\/h3>\n

                \u201cOn May 1 [1960], two weeks before the summit was to begin and just as May Day celebrations were starting up in Moscow, a Soviet surface-to-air missile shot down a U-2 spy plane over the village of Povarnia in the Ural Mountains.\u00a0 Both sides handled the incident badly.\u00a0 Eisenhower had long been uneasy about the U-2 flights, recognizing that they constituted an act of war.\u00a0 He consented to this particular flight only at the insistence of the military and the CIA and with assurances there would be no problems for the summit.\u00a0 For Khrushchev, the overflights had been especially humiliating.\u00a0 Still clinging to the hopes for a productive summit, he blamed hard-liners around Eisenhower. He hoped to capitalize on the triumph of shooting down the plane without destroying the summit, but he could not resist the temptation to overreach.\u00a0 He initially concealed that the pilot, Francis Gary Powers, had been taken alive and parts of the aircraft recovered, catching Washington in a lie when the usual explanations were issued of a weather plane straying off course.\u00a0 Eisenhower then compounded the problem by admitting to the spy flights without acknowledging he had approved Powers\u2019s mission\u2026.What is certain is that the \u2018U-2 mess,\u2019 as Eisenhower referred to it, destroyed the summit, cost the president and the United States heavily in prestige, ended any chance of substantive negotiations before the November elections, and left Berlin more dangerous than ever.\u201d \u2013George Herring,\u00a0From Colony to Superpower,\u00a0<\/em>pp. 698-99<\/p>\n

                \n

                Discussion Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n

                  \n
                • One critical context for the U-2 spy plane incident was the proliferation of espionage and clandestine operations during the Cold War.\u00a0 How had US covert activity been escalating in the 1950s, prior to the collapse of the Paris summit.<\/li>\n
                • How would you characterize President Eisenhower as a Cold Warrior?\u00a0 Was he engaged in inveterate brinksmanship during the 1950s, or do you see in his evolution the makings of a more prudent statesman?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
                  \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                  CHAPTER 15: Coexistence and Crises, 1953-1961 “The Cold War remained the dominant fact of international life in the 1950s.\u00a0 It was still primarily a bipolar affair between the United States and the Soviet Union, with blocs massed around each of the central combatants.\u00a0 It resembled traditional power struggles between nation-states, but it was also a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":373,"featured_media":0,"parent":10,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4352","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4352"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4769,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4352\/revisions\/4769"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}