President Eisenhower=s Foreign Policy and the Ugly American

Presented at the 20^th International Congress of Historical Sciences

Sydney Australia, 2-9 July, 2005

By Keith P. Dyrud

Abstract:

While President Eisenhower followed an anti‑communist foreign policy in the 1950s, this presentation will suggest that he opposed Athird world@ nationalism and overthrew several democratic governments in order to facilitate ongoing economic control of Athird world@ resources. His efforts to link the nationalist movements with communism was a foil to make his third world policy acceptable to the American people.

Even Eisenhower=s memoirs connect the Guatemalan and Iranian democracies with communism in such a convoluted way that they seem to be rationalizations rather than the real reasons for replacing those governments with a military dictatorship and an authoritarian monarchy, respectively.

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The Ugly American, a book by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick, was published as a novel in 1958, but its contents were a serious indictment of American foreign policy. When first published, the book was a Arunaway national best-seller@ drawing a Adevastating picture of how the United States was losing the struggle with Communism in Asia.@^[1] While the book may have been a Arunaway best-seller,@ it did not change American foreign policy.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was in his second term as president of the United States so it was his foreign policy that Lederer and Burdick critically analyzed. They agreed with Eisenhower=s stated objectives in America=s foreign policy, especially the need to stop the expansion of Communism, but they argued that the policy as implemented did not achieve that objective.

While Lederer and Burdick generally argued that economic policy was the primary arena for competition, they also noted that in Viet Nam, the United States had supported the French in their colonial war against the Communists. Lederer and Burdick described: AThe battles which led to Dien Bien Phu were classic examples of the Mao pattern. And yet our military missions advised, and the French went down to defeat, without having studied Mao=s writings.@^[2]

In economic policy, Lederer and Burdick argued that:

Most American technicians abroad are involved in the planning and execution of Abig@ projects: dams, highways, irrigation systems. The result is that we often develop huge technical complexes which someday may pay dividends but which at this moment in Asian development are neither needed nor wanted except by a few local politicians who see such projects as a means to power and wealth. Technicians who want to work on smaller and more manageable projects are not encouraged. The authors of this book gathered statements from native economists of what projects were Amost urgently needed@ in various Asian countries. These included improvement of chicken and pig breeding, small pumps which did not need expensive replacement parts, knowledge on commercial fishing, canning of food, improvement of seeds, small village-size papermaking plants (illiteracy in many countries is perpetrated by the fact that no one can afford paper), sanitary use of night-soil, and the development of small industries. These are the projects which would not only make friends, while costing little, but are also prerequisite to industrialization and economic independence for Asia. They must be realized before Communism can lose its appeal. We pay for huge highways through jungles in Asian lands where there is no transport except bicycle and foot. We finance dams where the greatest immediate need is a portable pump. We provide many millions of dollars= worth of military equipment which wins no wars and raises no