“Eisenhower was picked to put an end to the liberal Truman administration’s highly unpopular Korean War, and that’s what Ike did. He wasn’t as interventionist as the Democrats.”
History in rewrite ...
Ike had interventions in iran, lebanon, gautemala, dominican republic, sent a few folks to Vietnam even. Using CIA enabled us to do most of these interventions on the cheap.
But we also had the massive American military stationed in Europe and the constant Cold War developments of weapons etc.
Alas, early success led to hubris and also led to the Bay of Pigs in 1960.
It’s a pity the CIA got so incompetent in the Clinton era and since that we cant pull that kind of stuff off anymore.
Ike did make *one* mistake of *non*-intervention and that was Hungary. had we helped hungary in 1956 when they attempted to throw off the USSR’s yoke, the cold war would have been about 40 years shorter.
Comparing Presidents in different times is a bit unfair.
I would suggest that Ike wouldnt have responded to 9/11 attacks the way Obama or Al Gore would have. When Ike decided to topple govts, he toppled govts.
Truman only got into the korea mess because he ‘lost’ China and his state dept didnt appreciate the real threat there from north Korea.
Ike got us out because the oppty for victory had been squandered in late 1950 anyway.
The Bay of Pigs occurred on JFKs watch and failed largely because he didn’t follow Ike’s plan. Eisenhower was going to employ airpower to protect the beachhead. Kennedy got cold feet and apparently didn’t want to risk linking the invasion back to the US, as if that were an issue. He canceled the air support and the invasion force was left vulnerable to Castro’s troops.
Hungary would have been very difficult to do anything about. Eisenhower knew supply lines and internal lines of support. The Soviets had them in spades in Hungary and we didn’t. We would have risked igniting a major war with the USSR on their field of advantage, at a time when we were trying to rebuild Germany, France, and Britain. Intervening in Hungary would have risked the loss of all of western Europe, hardly a good gamble on our part.
One of my father’s classmates at staff and command college had just returned from a year in Vietnam in 1956. We had military advisors there from the time the French left after Dien Bien Phu. But Eisenhower wasn’t one to be sending combat troops there. Korea still had most of their attention in Asia, they expected the North was capable of launching another war.
Iran and Guatemala removed leaders we thought were prone to communist subversion and installed regimes friendly to us. Lebanon had its first muslim rebellion and its Christian President asked Ike for help in putting it down. I don’t recall Ike in the Dominican Republic but I do recall LBJ intervening in one of their periodic crisis.