Cold War: Brinkmanship

​Eisenhower and Brinkmanship

By Ryan Lemay

Vocabulary

brinkmanship,
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),
covert,
Eisenhower Doctrine,
Federal Civil Defense Administration (FDCA),
hydrogen bomb,
KGB,
Suez Crisis

Essential Question

How did U.S. and Soviet competition in the 1950s almost lead to nuclear war?

• When the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic weapon in August of 1949, the Truman administration created the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FDCA)

  • An agency to coordinate military, industrial, and civilian mobilization should the Soviet Union attack the United States with a nuclear weapon

• The United States was no longer the only nation with atomic technology

Nuclear Fear

• The FDCA created materials about public bomb shelters, evacuation plans, and training programs for local and state governments to build and use for preparedness for a nuclear attack in their areas

• The fear of nuclear attack became a part of American life for the next thirty years of the Cold War

Nuclear Fear

Open Ended

What emotions might you have felt if you had watched this video as an elementary school student during the Cold War?

• Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won a landslide victory over Democrat Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 presidential election

• Eisenhower and the Republicans campaigned that the Truman administration and Democrats were ineffective at battling communism abroad, especially given the establishment of communism in China and the stalemate of the Korean War

Eisenhower is Elected

• Eisenhower was a highly respected war hero in his role as the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during WWII

• By 1951, Eisenhower was appointed the first Supreme Commander of NATO

• He agreed to run for president as a Republican because he believed his leadership skills were better suited in this era of the Cold War

Eisenhower is Elected

• On November 1, 1952, just three days before election day, the United States successfully produced a hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb

• This weapon was almost 70 times more powerful than the atomic bombs used in Japan

• The Soviet Union matched the United States with the same capability in 1953

The Hydrogen Bomb

• The Cold War competition for military superiority now created the potential for the most destructive war in history

• Both of the worlds superpowers raced to stockpile arms

• The race also extended to destructive capability as both nations competed to see who could make the largest nuclear blast

The Hydrogen Bomb

• Working with his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower developed a new strategy for containing the spread of communism

• The Eisenhower administration resolved that the United States would be willing to use all of its military capability, including the use of nuclear weapons, to deter any nation that threatened the United States

Brinkmanship

• The policy was known as brinkmanship called for using the threat of all-out war to force the aggressor nation to back down

• The United States military was readied for this policy

• The U.S. Air Force was expanded and more nuclear weapons were produced

Brinkmanship

• The Soviet Union adopted the same policy as the two nations engaged in an arms race for military superiority

• By the early 1960s, both nations developed the capability to launch nuclear weapons from land launchers, by airplane, and by submarines

• Each nation believed that the other would refrain from using nuclear weapons because their use would result in mutually assured destruction

Brinkmanship

• Some Americans built fallout shelters

  • Fortified areas, usually underground, to protect the inhabitants from nuclear contamination and survive a nuclear attack

• Local communities designated public spaces for shelter for those who could not afford to build their own shelters

• The Federal Civil Defense Administration (FDCA) recommended that people store a two-week supply of food, water, and medicine

Public Response

Multiple Select

What were the effects of the policy of brinkmanship maintained by the United States and the Soviet Union?

Select all that apply.

• a reduction in the size of armed forces

• an intensified arms race

• greater public fear of nuclear war

• an increase in the number of nuclear weapons

• President Eisenhower made use of a new intelligence gathering agency, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to counter communist threats he perceived around the world

• The CIA was tasked with gathering information about activities abroad and used highly trained spies to do so

• he CIA conducted covert, or secret, operations in areas around the world that the Eisenhower administration believed posed a threat to U.S. security

The CIA

• Actions were taken in secret because interference of this kind was counter to U.S. stated policy and the United Nations principles that the people of the world ought to determine their own governments

• The Soviet counterpart was the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti

  • translated as Committee for State Security in English and is commonly referred to as the KGB

The CIA

In 1951, fearing that Iran would turn to the Soviet Union for support, the CIA gave millions of dollars to rebels to support their overthrow and reinstall the CIA-backed former shah, or king, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Iran

​In 1954, the CIA trained rebels in Guatemala to overthrow the democratically elected government that the United States suspected was sympathetic to communism. The CIA-trained military leader later became the dictator of the country.

Guatemala

​THE CIA

Multiple Select

What role did the CIA play in the Cold War?

Select all that apply.

• monitoring domestic threats of communism

• spying on foreign governments

• negotiating treaties with foreign governments to build alliances with the United States

• conducting secret operations against unfriendly governments

• The two superpowers established separate alliances for their mutual protection from each other with the establishment of NATO and the Warsaw Pact

• With a greater sense of security now, each superpower sought to extend its sphere of influence beyond these military alliances

• Nikita Khrushchev became the new leader of the USSR in 1953 and replaced Stalin

Global Crises

Edio | Commonwealth Charter Academy

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Multiple Choice

What reasoning guided Eisenhower's actions regarding the conflicts in Hungary, the Suez Crisis, and Vietnam?

• He wanted the United States to negotiate peaceful settlements in each area.

• He believed that intervention should be limited to only the United Nations.

• He did not want to escalate the problems to result in a greater military confrontation.

• He did not believe the threat of communism in each region was serious.

Open Ended

How did U.S. and Soviet competition in the 1950s almost lead to nuclear war?