EISENHOWER AS STRATEGIST:

THE COHERENT USE OF MILITARY POWER IN WAR AND PEACE

Steven Metz

February 1993
* * * * * *

The views expressed in this report are those of the author

and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of

the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the

U.S. Government. This book is approved for public release;

distribution unlimited.

* * * * * *

Comments pertaining to this publication are invited and may

be forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army

War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013-5050. Comments also may

be conveyed by calling the Conference Organizer, Dr. Gary L.

Guertner, via commercial (717) 245-3234 or DSN 242-3234.

* * * * * *

This study is dedicated to COL Denny Quinn, who first

prodded me toward things strategic, LTC Fred Downey and LTC Bob

Walz who helped keep me stumbling along the path, and Jayne, who

rode herd on Rachel and Stephanie so that I could write evenings

and weekends (sometimes!).
FOREWORD

The facts of Dwight D. Eisenhower's military career are

well-known. This does not mean, however, that there is nothing

to be gained from a careful examination of his experience.

Few if any American officers performed a wider array of

strategic functions--he was a staff planner in the War

Department, wartime commander of a massive coalition force,

peacetime Chief of Staff, and Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.

Eisenhower was directly involved in a number of major transitions

including the building of the wartime American Army, its

demobilization following the war, and the resuscitation of

American military strength during the initial years of the cold

war.

This means that Eisenhower's career can provide important

lessons on how a coherent strategy should and should not be built

during times of strategic transition. That is what this

monograph begins to do. It is not intended to be a biography in

the usual sense and thus offers no new facts or insights into

Eisenhower's life. Instead it uses that life as a backdrop for

exploring the broader essence of strategic coherence and draws

lessons from Eisenhower's career that can help guide the

strategic transition which the U.S. military now faces.

WILLIAM A. STOFFT

Major General, U.S.Army

Commandant
CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

A Reluctant Strategist.

In December 1941, Dwight Eisenhower was ordered to report

for duty at the War Plans Division (OPD) of the War Department in

Washington and thus began his ascent to the pinnacle of American

strategy. Like many soldiers, this was not a journey he

approached with enthusiasm. Eisenhower felt that having missed

combat in World War I hindered his career, and so found

assignment to the War Department "a hard blow."1

 But despite a

plea to Brigadier General Haislip, Chief of the Personnel

Division, Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall insisted

Eisenhower was the proper man for the job.2 "By General

Marshall's word," Eisenhower feared, "I was completely condemned

to a desk job in Washington for the duration."3

Eisenhower's anxiety did not come solely from careerism. He

knew that his training and experience only partially prepared him

for the complexity, subtlety, ambiguity, and frequent confusion

of high-level strategy. Though confident of his soldierly

skills, he was not so automatically sure of his ability in a

realm where political acumen and horizontal leadership mattered

more than vertical command relationships. Confidence there would

come later.

During his first week in Washington, a frustrated Eisenhower

wrote in his diary: "There are lots of amateur strategists on the

job, and prima donnas everywhere. I'd give anything to be back

in the field."4 This says much about Eisenhower's personality

and his rather peculiar path to positions of strategic leadership

and power. This reluctant strategist never exhibited the

uninhibited, Nietzschean quest for power that propelled an

Alexander, Napoleon, or Hitler. He was not "driven by a ruthless

daemon" like Marlborough.5

 Eisenhower's life was devoid of the

noblesse oblige and sense of historic destiny seen in Churchill,

Metternich, or Franklin Roosevelt. And, Eisenhower was not a

Kissinger, drawn first to the theoretical intricacies of

strategy, its abstract architecture and attractions, and then

later tempted into the corridors of power. Why, then, did he

become a strategist?

The common answer is a deep and moving sense of duty. 

Through Eisenhower's own writing and that of admirers, we are

presented the image of a simple soldier unwillingly burdened with

the mantle of strategist. Kenneth S. Davis, for example,

attributed Eisenhower with "a selfless devotion to duty which set

him completely apart from those ambitious officers who, in the

swiftly expanding Army, sought opportunities for personal

advancement."6

 It is misleading, though, to push this myth too

far--sometimes duty is simply ambition in defilade. But
Eisenhower is like Robert E. Lee: historians can note flaws in

judgement or intelligence (so long as they do it gently), but his

motives are usually considered beyond reproach.

If there is a precursor for Eisenhower's path to power, it

may be Bismarck. The Iron Chancellor, too, was originally driven

to power by duty (albeit duty to the junker class and its

Hohenzollern dynasty rather than the nation as a whole). But

again like Bismarck, once Eisenhower tasted power, he was

addicted. Any anxiety about the travails of politics, diplomacy,

and horizontal leadership evaporated. He found strategy

intoxicating and quickly developed competence.

This was not really surprising; Eisenhower was at least as

well prepared as most of his contemporaries for the direction of

global strategy.7 The Army Command and General Staff College and

War College had introduced him to the strategic dimensions of

military thinking.8

 Eisenhower augmented this formal education

with a rigorous course of self-study on strategic theory and

history. While executive officer of the 20th Infantry Brigade at

Camp Gaillard in the Panama Canal Zone, in particular, he began

serious consideration of the strategic decisions of the Civil War

and Clausewitz's On War.9

Several assignments gave Eisenhower strategic experience of

a sort. Following completion of the War College in 1928, he

served as special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of War and

dealt with global issues. During the late 1930s, he was senior

military assistant to Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines. This

forced him to consider alternative strategies of national defense

and methods for building, training, and equipping armies (as well

as the frustrations of dealing with powerful, eccentric

personalities). His post-1941 military posts, crowned by command

of Allied forces in Europe and a term as Army Chief of Staff,

further leavened the theoretical background with practical

experience. Eisenhower, the simple soldier, thus transmuted into

Eisenhower, the strategist.

The determination to master even unsavory tasks when duty

demanded was an enduring trait of Eisenhower's character. 

Whether an unwilling strategist or not, this allowed him to

transcend inhibitions and join the ranks of more naturally

enthusiastic strategists like Churchill or Napoleon. Throughout

his career, Eisenhower turned personal strengths into strategic

skill. But the translation was not perfect.

Edward Luttwak has described strategy as a realm dominated

by paradox. Since strategy pits at least two thinking, scheming,

conflicting antagonists, what appears best often is not and what

works one day soon will not.10 This paradoxical nature of

strategy flavored Eisenhower's career as strategist. Many of the

same perceptions, attitudes, and techniques that brought him

success in some dimensions of strategy became hindrances in

others. In the end, his pursuit of strategic mastery was
incomplete.

Analyzing Strategy.

Americans tend to associate strategy with a formal plan. 

They see it as something that emerges from a byzantine process of

coordination and review to be approved by appropriate

authorities, assigned a document number, and distributed. Lower

echelons then take the newly sacrosanct document, craft miniature

replicas, and apply them. This attitude clearly reflects our

political culture and our bureaucratized approach to planning in

general.11 It also represents an obstacle to true strategic

acumen. We should see strategy as a consistent and long-term

method of problem-solving. The phrase "a strategic approach to

planning" reflects a deeper understanding than does "the national

security strategy." It shows a grasp of the fluidity of

strategy, of its relativity, and, most of all, it indicates that

strategy is a deliberately patterned way of approaching problems

rather than the output of the process.

From this perspective, strategy can be defined as order

extended in time, space, and milieus. It attempts to impose

order in a disorderly environment of thinking, reacting,

competing, and conflicting entities. Strategy is the organized

and deliberate use of power resources to attain, protect, or

promote goals with a minimum of waste and a maximum chance of

success. In the national security realm, all nations define

goals and use the elements of national power--economic,

political, military, and psychological--to attain them, but not

all nations do it in a consistently strategic fashion. If a

state chooses a strategic approach to its security problems,

chaotic, ad hoc, and disorganized applications of national power

are, to a varying extent, replaced with orderly ones. As a

result, efficiency increases.

Strategy making entails defining objectives, priorities,

methods, concepts and techniques; planning the mobilization and

sustainment of power resources; shaping attitudes, beliefs,

perceptions, values, and morale; and crafting an organization to

flesh out the strategic framework and oversee its implementation.

 A proficient strategist attempts to assure that these things are

done with efficiency and effectiveness. A strategic genius

assures that these things are done with maximum efficiency and

effectiveness.

The intricate and enigmatic nature of strategy makes it

difficult to analyze. Efficiency can be measured with some

certainty in mechanical systems, but not so easily in the world

of strategy. How, then, to assess the quality of a strategy? The

simplest solution is to define quality as success. Strategies

that succeeded were of high quality; those that failed were not.

Although this is easy, it is unsatisfactory. A good argument can

be made that even the best possible strategies sometimes fail and
an astrategic approach sometimes succeeds. While all strategists

seek success, even extremely talented ones may not always attain

it. In addition, using success as the central criterion may work

for historical analysis, but is of little help in assessing the

coherence of an existing or emerging strategy. The only way out

of this dilemma is to find an analytical technique, heuristic

device, or framework which does not rely on success or failure.

Characteristics.

The first step is to delineate features which characterize a

coherent strategy, one that maximizes efficiency and

effectiveness. Admittedly, there is an epistemological problem

here. The linkage of certain characteristics to certain outcomes

in the past does not produce a general law. We can suppose but

not prove, according to the philosopher David Hume, that there is

a resemblance between relationships with which we have experience

or knowledge such as history and "those which lie beyond the

reach of our discovery," including the future.12 The nature of

conflict or, at least, ways of understanding and approaching it

do change. Thus it is possible that a feature which

characterized sound strategies in the past may not do so in the

future.

The best response to this problem is to bypass it and assume

that what has worked in the past usually will work in the future,

at least at the level of general features and broad patterns. 

Given this, it is possible to distill a reasonable list of the

characteristics of a sound strategy--order, initiative, etc. But

to really get at the heart of the problem, such a list must be

further subdivided.

Some of the characteristics of a coherent strategy, for

example, are linear. These are features, characteristics, or

physical things where more is generally better. Strategists

attempt to maximize them, at least to the point where the costs

of increase outweigh expected gains. An example of a linear

characteristic is synchronization, the coordination and meshing

of different types of power and of related activities within a

power type. For grand strategy this means that political,

psychological, military, and economic components support one

another or, at least, do not detract from the effectiveness of

the other. For military strategy, air, sea, and land efforts

must complement each other. For a coalition strategy, whether

grand or military, synchronization means coordinating the

activities of allies. Overall, synchronization entails a clear

notion of timing and phasing. Resources must be applied in an

order that maximizes effectiveness. In an even broader sense,

mobilization of resources must be synchronized with their

application. More synchronization is usually better than less,

up to the point where further increases are not worth their cost.

Other linear characteristics include:
• UNDERSTANDING of self, allies, and enemies.

• CLARITY of goals, priorities, level of acceptable risk,

relationship of means and ends.

• ORDER in the application of power and in the planning

process.

• INITIATIVE.

• MORALE.

• SKILL of the implementors of strategic decisions.

• INTELLIGENCE and INFORMATION.

• SUPPORT by key leaders, elites, and publics.

• DETAILED sub-plans and contingency plans, (i.e., "What

if?" thinking).

The second component of a coherent strategy is the dyadic. This involves maintaining harmony or managing dissonance between

diametric facets of strategy. Boldness is an example. 

Clausewitz argues that a soldier "can possess no nobler quality,"

but also noted that boldness had "to be supported by a reflective

mind, so that boldness does not degenerate into purposeless

bursts of blind passion."13 The key is balance or harmony among

dyadic or polar features (see Figure 1).

Mitigators.

Clausewitz argued that in war there is an inherent tendency

toward escalating violence.14 In the realm of pure logic, this

would have no limit other than the physical and human resources

of the antagonists. The destructiveness of wars would

inextricably spiral toward exhaustion or destruction. In

practice, however, a number of factors temper the tendency toward

escalation. Foremost among them is the rationality of

policymakers and strategists as they recognize the need for

proportion between effort expended and expected gain. This same

logic holds for the development of a sound strategy. A good

strategist knows, at least in an inchoate and instinctive way,

that he needs to maximize linear characteristics and balance or

harmonize dyadic ones. But a panoply of factors mitigate the

ability of the strategist to do this. These mitigators are an

important element of strategic analysis.

Often flaws or shortcomings in the character or intellect of

the strategist or strategists serve as mitigators. This is

particularly true in the dyadic realm. Even a Napoleon or

Alexander could not be equally agile and persistent, hard and
soft, aggressive and cautious. Martin van Crevald notes, "though

nothing is more important in war than unity of command, it is

impossible for one man to know everything."15 He might also have

added that it is impossible for one man to be everything and

difficult to do the correct thing at the proper time. 

Strategists may occasionally transcend their own limitations by

swerving from their usual ways, but this is always short-lived. 

Diametrics resurface and erode the coherence of strategy.

Sustained strategic success demands that key strategists

form symbiotic relationships with others whose talents and

personalities are different, thus generating a balance of

diametrics. This is easier for the analyst to see than for the

strategist to do. It is difficult for powerful men to recognize

their own shortcomings and take concrete actions to compensate. 

This is the reason that flaws or shortcomings in the intellect or

personality of strategists often mitigate against a maximum level

of coherence in their plans and actions.

The organization by which strategy is made, implemented, and
adjusted can also serve as a mitigator. Again, dyadic elements

are the most difficult. Unless an organization delicately

balances centralization and decentralization, formality and

informality, and well-developed plans with flexible procedures,

the output--the strategy itself--will suffer. Bureaucratic

decisionmaking, which stresses consensus- building rather than

the inherent coherence of outputs, can erode the effectiveness of

strategy. In addition, faulty methods for staffing the

organization can detract from the coherence of the strategy. 

Power and responsibility tend to accrue to individuals who master

the intricacies of the bureaucratic process rather than the

intricacies of strategy. The criteria which key strategists use

to staff their organizations thus affect the coherence of the

strategy itself.

Finally, strategic culture and the political climate can

mitigate strategic coherence. Strategic culture is composed of

the preferences, values, perceptions, and attitudes that delimit

the use of force in pursuit of national goals.16 It grows from a

nation's historical experience, ideology, and methods of

political and economic organization. Strategic culture affects 

both ultimate ends and acceptable means for the application of

power. Strategic culture also determines the extent to which the

public and other groups and organizations not directly involved

in strategy-making affect the process. For democracies, the

openness of the decisionmaking process and the dispersal of

political power often mitigate against strategic coherence.

In describing great generals, J.F.C. Fuller claimed that

they invariably "understood their age."17 But understanding

itself does not automatically allow strategists to transcend the

limitations of their age. The political climate--the way that

elites and publics define the national interest and the price

they will pay to attain it--can be controlled or manipulated, but

not easily. Given this, a coherent strategy incorporates a

program of building and sustaining support or acquiescence for

the strategy. Internally, this focuses on key elites and, in

open democracies, on the mass public. Externally, support or

acquiescence is sought from allies and neutrals. Both internally

and externally, this is done by crafting efficacious images of

the conflict and disseminating them. A program of mobilizing and

sustaining support requires continual adjustment.

Assessment.

Final assessment of a strategy comes from comparing its

inherent coherence with its mitigators. The key question is: Did

the strategist or strategists maximize the coherence of the

strategy given the mitigators? Did they, in other words, do all

that they could? (See Figure 2.) If the answer to the final

question is "yes," the chances of success are maximized, but not

guaranteed. To maximize linear elements, to balance dyadic ones,

to transcend mitigators--all are difficult and sometimes
impossible tasks.

Eisenhower's career provides an excellent laboratory to

illustrate this method of assessing strategy. During this time

in uniform, he was warfighter and deterrer. To some extent, he

succeeded in both realms. But whether as Supreme Commander of

Allied Forces, Chief of Staff of the Army, or Commander of NATO,

Eisenhower did not pursue strategic coherence in any sort of

deliberate, planned fashion. There is little abstract theorizing

about the features of a quality strategy anywhere in his massive

writings. In line with his pervasive pragmatism, he did craft

rules-of-thumb and guidelines. In composite, these indicate an

intuitive feel for the elements of a sound military strategy and

illustrate the obstacles to maximizing its effectiveness and

efficiency.
CHAPTER 2

WARFIGHTING

Introduction.

At the outbreak of World War II, Eisenhower was one of a

number of U.S. military officers who had spent decades preparing

for the opportunity they now faced. But even among the large

group of untested senior leaders, Eisenhower had shown special

talent for important tasks.18 The war was to provide the perfect

context for the first blossoming of his strategic talent. In

warfighting strategy, dyadic balances illustrated in Figure 1 are

important, sometimes crucial, but the linear component is usually

even more vital. The key tasks are to seize, hold, and destroy,

all of which are done easier with more forces and materiel, and

superior morale. Since Eisenhower was especially strong in the

linear component of strategic coherence, he proved to be a

first-rate warfighting strategist, especially in the peculiar

variant of war fought by coalitions of open democracies.

Context.

"The basic contours of Allied strategy took shape quickly

after the entry of the United States into the war. After all,

American involvement was not really a surprise, and thus

Roosevelt and key advisers like George Marshall had adequate time

to consider key issues. The British, with 2 years' experience

fighting Hitler and a much richer strategic tradition than the

United States, provided the foundation and dominated the initial

period of strategic consensus-building.

The most fundamental strategic question of all--which enemy

should receive priority--was answered before the U.S. entered the

war. A series of American-British staff conversations from

January to March 1941 led to the conclusion that defeat of

Germany should be the first objective of the Western Allies.19

This was reinforced during Roosevelt's first meeting with the

British after Pearl Harbor at the ARCADIA Conference (December

1941). What remained for the planners, then, was the fleshing

out of this strategic construct and the development of realistic

methods to apply it.

Again the British were the driving force. Winston Churchill

had prepared a series of papers calling for a three-phase

strategy.20 The first phase was "closing the ring." This called

for attacks around the periphery of the Nazi empire and an

economic blockade. The culmination was to be an invasion of

French North Africa in 1942. The second phase was "liberating

the populations." While this would eventually require the

invasion of Europe, Churchill stressed the provision of aid to

resistance movements in German-occupied countries. The British

Army would only cross the channel to administer the coup de grace
once resistance movements in the occupied countries weakened the

Nazis.21 The last phase of the strategy would be a direct

assault on Germany. With some additional development, this plan

became Allied strategy. In the initial phase, the strategic

bombing campaign and support to Russia also became crucial

elements. Furthermore, much of Allied strategy focused on the

mechanics of the buildup of American and British military power

which Churchill's plan implied but did not spell out.

Despite American and British consensus over the broad

contours of military strategy, there were serious debates between

them. Three were most persistent. The first concerned the

emphasis given peripheral operations, especially in the

Mediterranean. London was consistently more enthusiastic about

these than Washington. Because the British remained the more

influential partner in strategy-making until 1943, they won

debates concerning the invasion of North Africa (Operation

TORCH), Sicily (Operation HUSKY), and Italy (Operation SHINGLE)

despite American objections. "To the American military chiefs,"

Kent Roberts Greenfield wrote, "TORCH meant that Allied strategy

had been diverted from the highroad to victory into a dead-end

theater from which no decisive blow at Germany could ever be

delivered."22 Although American planners saw these peripheral

operations as distractions from preparation for the direct

assault on the continent, they reluctantly agreed when it became

clear that resources for a cross-channel invasion would not be

available in 1942 or 1943. Eventually the phenomenal productive

capacity of the United States allowed the Allies to pursue

peripheral operations in the Mediterranean and deploy adequate

resources for the cross-channel invasion.

The second debate concerned the timing of the cross-channel

invasion with the British advocating delay as long as possible to

allow peripheral operations, the strategic bombing campaigns, the

resistance movements, and the Russians to weaken Germany. The

third was over the degree of centralized authority given the

Allied Supreme Commander. The British tended to advocate a large

measure of autonomy for component commanders with the Supreme

Commander operating like a chairman of the board; Americans

favored greater control by the Supreme Commander.

Eventually, control of Allied strategy shifted. By the

Cairo and Teheran conferences of 1943, the Americans had overcome

their initially ad hoc approach to joint and combined planning

and were providing the bulk of the resources to the Western

Alliance. The emergence of Eisenhower as an influential and

successful leader also helped. As a result, the Americans came

to dominate Alliance strategy and return it to the more

aggressive and direct approach they favored.23

For the invasion of the continent, the first objective was

defined functionally: gain air superiority. This was followed by

the landing, the consolidation of the beachhead and its buildup.

 After the breakout from the Normandy beachhead, Allied planners
expected the Germans to regroup and defend the Seine and Somme,

and later along the Siegfried Line of prepared defenses and the

Rhine.24 Western forces were to breach these in a broad-front

offensive with emphasis on the left or northern wing, destroying

as many enemy forces as possible.25 At the same time, they were

to seize high capacity ports such as Antwerp. Once they cleared

the Germans from France, Allied forces were to pause, gather

supplies, exterminate Nazi forces remaining west of the Rhine,

develop bridgeheads across the river, implement a double

envelopment of the Ruhr, and then fan out across Germany. 

Immediately after the breakout, the main advance was along the

line Amiens-Maubeuge-Liege-the Ruhr, and the secondary advance in

the south along the line Verdun-Metz. An invasion of southern

France, an offensive in Italy, aid to the Soviets, and an

escalated strategic bombing campaign supported this main attack.

 The consolidating sweep across Germany was to complete the plan

and prevent the Nazi forces from retreating to the so-called

"national redoubt" in the Alps where, it was feared, they would

instigate guerrilla warfare.

This plan was developed before the invasion of Normandy and

implemented almost exactly as drawn. According to Walter Bedell

Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff, "...I do not believe a great

campaign has ever been fought before with so little change in its

original strategic plan."26 Again, though, there were enduring

debates, sometimes among the Americans but more frequently

between the British and Americans. The most persistent of these

pitted advocates of the broad-front offensive against those

favoring a single narrow thrust into Germany following the

breakout from Normandy. Bernard Law Montgomery, commander of

British 21st Army Group, was the most dogged supporter of the

narrow thrust. Immediately after the breakout in August,

Montgomery requested that the advance of Patton's Third Army in

the south be halted, the Allied Airborne Army and the U.S. First

Army be assigned to him, and all available supplies be given to

his newly enlarged army group which would then press toward

Berlin before the Germans could consolidate their defenses. At

the same time, Patton asked for priority on supplies. This,

according to the American general, would follow the old military

axiom of reinforcing success, since the Third Army had advanced

much more rapidly than Montgomery's command. Throughout the

remainder of the campaign, Montgomery, in particular, repeated

his request for reinforcement and a narrow front advance. 

Eisenhower, however, doggedly stuck to his broad-front strategy

aimed primarily at destroying Germany's military power.

Coherence.

The intrinsic coherence of Eisenhower's warfighting strategy

can best be distilled from two periods in his career. The first

was the time spent as a planner at the War Department in 1942. 

As a staff planner, Eisenhower developed a framework for a global

military strategy in February 1942 and helped engineer the
opening Allied offensives against Germany. Both projects were at

the request of General Marshall. The February study analyzed the

military implications of the "Germany first" decision. 

Eisenhower argued that to defeat the Nazis, the most immediate

tasks were: the preservation of Great Britain and its sea links

to the United States; keeping the Soviet Union in the war; and

preventing an Axis take-over of India and the Middle East.27

In March 1942, Eisenhower pushed this line of thinking even

further in the first detailed blueprint for the Allied offensive

against Germany. This included plans for Operation BOLERO, the

buildup of forces and supplies in Britain; Operation ROUNDUP, a

major cross-channel attack scheduled for April 1943; and

Operation SLEDGEHAMMER, a smaller cross-channel contingency

attack which could be launched before the buildup was complete if

a Russian collapse seemed imminent or if Germany appeared on the

verge of collapse.

The second period useful in analyzing the logic of

Eisenhower's strategy is the time between the breakout from the

Normandy beachhead and the surrender of Germany (August 1944-May

1945). While Eisenhower had been consulted on the key strategic

decisions of the Mediterranean campaign, he did not make them. 

And, when given command of the cross-channel invasion, Eisenhower

found that much solid planning had already been done under the

direction of British Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan.28 The

broad tactical plans of Operation OVERLORD were completed and

approved by the American-British Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS)

in August 1943.29 Even given these parameters, Eisenhower, as the

Supreme Commander, began to play a central role in Allied

decision making.30 Vital decisions, especially those dealing

with appointments to top staff and command positions, remained. 

Thus Eisenhower's influence over the coherence or incoherence of

Allied strategy increased markedly. In a very real sense, with

the invasion at Normandy General Eisenhower passed from an

adviser and implementor of strategy to its maker.

Eisenhower's skill as a strategist during these two periods

must be considered separately. After all, the role of a

strategic commander and of a staff strategist varies in some

fundamental ways. For the commander, structure and psychology

take on added importance. Leadership, to phrase it differently,

is as important as logic. But even though a commander has more

influence over actual strategy than most staff planners, few

modern commanders attempt total control of strategy formulation.

 They know that even a Napoleon-- whom Martin van Creveld called

"the most competent human being who ever lived"--could only do

that with transitory success.31 Thus the ability to select

talented subordinate commanders and staff planners and to

construct procedures to draw the best from them is as much a

determinant of strategic coherence as the genius of the commander

himself.

As both staff strategist and strategic commander, the linear
component of coherence was Eisenhower's strength. This reflected

a longstanding tradition in the U.S. Army. What Russell Weigley

calls "the American way of war" first coalesced into a

war-winning strategy under U.S. Grant. In this quintessentially

American approach to conflict, more was always better--more men,

more firepower, and more technology. Quantity was a surrogate

for harmony and, often, for skill. The linear component thus

dominated.

This "more is better" approach brought dividends. 

Eisenhower was, for example, a consistent advocate of clarity in

strategic planning, whether clarity of priorities, objectives, or

phases. He methodically developed a general notion of ultimate

goals, defined preliminary objectives, avoided distractions, and

delineated the limits of risk and cost for the attainment of

objectives. "The first question that must be definitely

decided," Eisenhower wrote to George Marshall in March 1942, "is

the region or theater in which the first major offensive effort

of the United Powers must take place."32 Once a cross-channel

invasion of Europe was defined as the key objective, Eisenhower

steadfastly opposed other operations, however tantalizing, that

would detract from it.33

Eisenhower was also aware that the diffusion of authority in

a coalition of democracies made focus on a given set of

objectives extremely difficult. Distractions, bickering, and

politics were rampant. This was frustrating for someone with an

intuitive grasp of strategic coherence. In a note to himself

while Deputy Chief for the Pacific and Far East of the War Plans

Division, Eisenhower wrote:

The struggle to secure adoption by all concerned of a

common concept of strategical objectives is wearing me

down. Everybody is too much engaged with small things

of his own--or with some vague idea of larger political

activity to realize what we are doing--or rather not

doing.

We've got to get to Europe and fight--and we've got to

quit wasting resources all over the world--and still

worse--wasting time. If we're to keep Russia in, save

the Middle East, India and Burma, we've got to begin

slugging with air at West Europe; to be followed by a

land attack as soon as possible.34

From the need to focus on given objectives, two key tasks in

strategic planning emerge. The first is the clarification of the

criteria used to define goals and set priorities. These often

remain unspoken and vague; this mitigates against coherence,

particularly in a situation where a large number of staff

planners contribute vital components of the strategy. Coherence

is augmented, in other words, when criteria are clarified.

Sometimes these criteria will be purely military. This, of
course, is solidly within the American tradition. In 1942, for

example, Eisenhower's rationale for the invasion of the European

continent made no reference to restoring the global balance of

power or the moral obligation to liberate democracies on the

continent, but instead stressed more mundane (and perfectly

logical) criteria. The paucity of Allied shipping, Eisenhower

argued, supported the use of the shortest possible sea routes

which ran from the American northeast to the British Isles. 

Furthermore, the railroads and highways in Western Europe could

best support the sort of rapid offensive the Allies envisaged,

and Britain already had an airfield network.35 Western Europe,

in other words, was a developed theater while other potential

avenues of advance were not.

After the invasion of the continent, Eisenhower again relied

on purely military criteria to structure strategic decisions. He

believed strongly that "destroying enemy forces was always our

guiding principle . . ."36 Even when Eisenhower struck an area

rather than the German army such as the envelopment of the Ruhr

in 1945, the justification was the support that the region

provided for the army and the likelihood that the main German

military force would fight rather than surrender the region.37

Like Richmond in the Civil War, the Ruhr was a center of gravity

as much because the enemy attached importance to it as for its

intrinsic value as a production, communications, and

transportation node.

Even with the emphasis on purely military criteria for

strategic decision making, Eisenhower was not un-Clausewitzean.

No successful strategic-level commander--<%0>who by definition

lives at the cusp of the military and political worlds--can be. 

The Allied Supreme Commander remained acutely aware of the

linkage of policy and warmaking even while his natural

inclination was to focus on military criteria for strategy

making. During the debate surrounding Operation TORCH, for

example, Eisenhower made clear that since the invasion of North

Africa could distract the Allies from preparation for a

cross-channel attack, he opposed it on military grounds. At the

same time, he was sensitive enough to American public opinion, to

the need to take the offensive against Germany to bolster

national will, that he willingly acceded once Roosevelt decided

in favor of the North Africa operation.38

This same tendency--to rely on military criteria but defer

to political factors when his superiors insisted--characterized

Eisenhower's decision making after OVERLORD. The original Allied

plan called for an invasion of southern France--Operational

ANVIL--to follow OVERLORD. ANVIL forces were to open the port of

Marseilles, drive up the Rhone valley, and eventually link-up

with the armies driving west from Normandy. Churchill, who

initially agreed to ANVIL, eventually opposed it. Better, he

argued, to use the forces intended for ANVIL to invade the

Balkans. Eisenhower felt that such an operation was not

militarily justified. There were few German forces to be
destroyed in the Balkans and Allied lines of communication would

be long. But he made clear that if political considerations

overrode military logic, he would dutifully comply.39 Roosevelt-

-operating from the traditional American approach to war--backed

his general rather than the British Prime Minister, so ANVIL

proceeded.

Eisenhower followed the same pattern during the final

assault on Germany in 1945. After capturing the Ruhr, he planned

to move to the remaining German industrial area around Leipzig

and Dresden and link-up with the Russians on the Elbe. Churchill

begged him to seize Berlin before the Russians did. Eisenhower

countered that military factors justified the easiest and

shortest link-up with the Russians, but noted that he would

change his advance on orders from the two Western heads of

state.40 When Roosevelt did not support Churchill, Eisenhower

stuck to his original operational plan.

The second key task in strategic planning is to distinguish

necessary and desirable objectives. Eisenhower was consistently

clear on this. The clearest example is his February 1942 plan

for global strategy.41 Since it was impossible at that time to

take the strategic offensive against both Germany and Japan,

Eisenhower argued that preventing further Japanese expansion was

desirable but not necessary for ultimate victory.42 "The

principle to be observed in strategic deployment," Eisenhower

wrote, "is merely that minima should be diverted to secondary or

merely desirable objectives while maxima are to be striven for in

primary, essential, operations."43

To distinguish necessary and desirable objectives,

Eisenhower continued to rely on military factors. Without

realizing it, he persistently struggled with a major dilemma in

the American approach to war: forging a military strategy aimed

at annihilating enemy forces in a strategic culture with a low

tolerance for casualties. This low tolerance nearly prevented

the full implementation of a strategy of annihilation by Grant in

1864 and certainly still held in 1944. There were only two

possible solutions. One was to use technology, firepower

(especially air and artillery), strategic mobility, and

operational maneuver to minimize casualties while destroying the

enemy. Sherman and MacArthur were paragons of this method. The

second, complementary, solution was reliance on allies to bear

part of the blood cost. For the United States in World War II,

though, the fact that our primary ally, Britain, had an even

lower tolerance for casualties complicated this. The answer was

to place great emphasis on keeping the Soviet Union in the war.

As a strategic planner, Eisenhower saw this. In a

memorandum to General Marshall and Admiral King, he wrote:

Russia is the great question mark of the war... So long

as the Allies regard Germany as their chief opponent

and the nation whose defeat provides the speediest path
to winning the war, all of our calculations must

revolve around the question of what is to be the

outcome of the present Russian campaign.

Defeat of the Russian armies would compel a complete

reorientation of Allied strategy. It would practically

eliminate all opportunity of defeating Germany by

direct action and would throw the Allies permanently on

the defensive throughout Europe.44

Other time-tested axioms of military strategy also helped

Eisenhower differentiate necessary and desirable objectives. For

example, he understood that when facing multiple enemies, it is

better to strike at the weaker first. This might seem to support

a "Japan first strategy." After careful analysis, Eisenhower

decided the "Germany first" strategy was not at odds with this

principle:

It is an axiom that when a divided enemy is

encountered, the weaker portion should be attacked and

destroyed first. Because, in the absolute sense, the

European Axis is stronger in total combat power than is

Japan, even with its Navy, the axiom has been cited as

an argument for reversing the judgement and calculation

of years. This reasoning is without validity. Military

estimates are based upon relative power at a particular

point of actual or possible contact. Because of

Japan's geographical position, she is relatively

stronger in East Asia, as opposed to the force that can

be now brought and maintained against her, than is

Germany-Italy in Europe. This is particularly true as

long as Russia is in the war.45

Eisenhower also followed the old principle of not

reinforcing failure. His position on the Philippines in early

1942 showed this. He argued that some effort to bolster American

and Filipino resistance must be made for political and

psychological reasons, but since it was not possible to

decisively alter the outcome of that operation, these should be

kept to a minimum.46

Furthermore, he avidly sought strategic synchronization.

Synchronization takes three forms in warfighting strategy. The

first is geographic. Just as a tactical commander must

coordinate attacks, a strategic commander must assure that

activity in different theaters or different areas of operations

is synchronized. As a staff planner, Eisenhower suggested that

conditions on the Russian front shape the activities of the

Western Allies. He wrote, "synchronization of effort will not be

possible if Russia is defeated before the U.K. and the U.S. are

in a position to act effectively."47 This also indicates that

Eisenhower understood the relationship of synchronization to risk

and strength. Synchronization--like deception, efficiency,

surprise, and other elements of a coherent strategy--is a tool to
diminish risk. Since strength also diminishes risk, an

antagonist who is in a strong position--as the Western Allies

were after August 1944--is not as concerned with synchronization.

This same pattern holds during Eisenhower's period as

strategic commander. Early in the war, adverse force balances

created major risks for the Allies so synchronization was vital.

 The ANVIL invasion, for example, supported the breakout from the

Normandy beachhead, and eastward offensives during Operation

TORCH were coordinated with westward thrusts from Egypt. After

the Normandy breakout, the force and resource balance shifted

dramatically in favor of the Allies so there was little effort to

synchronize activity in northern Europe and Italy. This lessened

the coherence of Allied strategy but did not create unacceptable

levels of risk.

The second form of synchronization involves the type of

military activity. This was especially true in Europe where

resistance and partisan movements were active. "Subversive

activities, propaganda, and political warfare," Eisenhower wrote,

"are not only inappropriate, but a positive menace unless

carefully and completely coordinated with all military plans and,

therefore, must be passed on and approved by the supreme

commander."48 The central obstacle to synchronization after

OVERLORD was the autonomy of American and British strategic air

forces. This was not debilitating, however, because there were

adequate amounts of tactical air for support of ground operations

and because Eisenhower could call on strategic forces when

necessary.

The third form synchronizes the components of strategy,

especially the military and the political. In a democracy, where

strategy must mobilize and preserve public support as well as

seek victory over the enemy, the marriage of the military and

political is complicated. However much he wanted to ignore the

internal dimension of strategy, Eisenhower knew he could not. 

Even his initial plans at the War Department considered domestic

morale.49 As a staff planner, though, Eisenhower did not have to

master this form of synchronization but left it to Marshall and

Roosevelt.

Procedural order also characterized Eisenhower's approach to

strategy making and operational planning. A strategist in a

mature theater has less freedom to configure things like avenues

of approach and lines of operation than one in an undeveloped

theater. The same holds for strategy making. A commander in a

well-developed military organization, unlike a revolutionary

strategist, has limited control over the structure through which

strategy is developed and implemented. Instead, he inherits an

organization and is already socialized into a particular approach

to the structure of strategy making. Freed from the burdens of

creating an organization from scratch, his task is to maximize

the potential of this structure. But as most great military

strategists found, an intricate bureaucracy for strategy making
can be as much a burden as a boon.

During the first year of American participation in World War

II, the finely-honed process of British strategic planning, in

comparison to the disorder and ad hoc nature of American efforts,

meant:

When American military chieftains met their British

counterparts for combined strategic planning through

nearly the first half of the war the British could

argue for their strategic designs with greater

forcefulness than the Americans, simply because they

had superior interservice command arrangements and

superior organization for the kind of interservice

strategic planning that had to underlie a global war.50

As a result, London often got its way when the two allies

disagreed. Only later did the development of the American Joint

Chiefs of Staff and growing experience combine to alleviate this

problem.

When Eisenhower was Supreme Commander, much of the broad

strategy was crafted by the CCS. The long-range planning for the

invasion of Europe was done by the Supreme Headquarters, Allied

Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) before the OVERLORD invasion. This

meant that shaping the post-breakout Allied strategy was more a

J-3 (operations) function than a J-5 (strategic plans and policy)

one. For Eisenhower, this was certainly no problem. He was

perfectly comfortable with the standard staff organization and

understood it completely. Moreover, he was also aware of the

importance of staff construction in a warfighting situation of

unprecedented complexity. In his strategy-making structure,

Eisenhower thus sought both efficiency and effectiveness.

Efficiency was in part a by-product of clear and streamlined

organization. To attain it, lines of authority and areas of

responsibility had to be clear, and related functions unified.

Eisenhower showed a penchant for this sort of efficiency. From

the beginning he was plagued by what he considered the chaos and

complacency in the War Plans Division. He felt, according to

David Eisenhower, that "Allied military planning was in

disarray."51 In the spring of 1942, he played a major role in

reorganizing the War Plans Division of the War Department into

the Operations Division. As a strategic commander, Eisenhower

relied heavily on his staff, and thus took special care in

filling key positions.52 Even though the OVERLORD plan was a

composite effort, the organization of SHAEF was purely

Eisenhower's creation.53

The key to efficiency in the structure of Eisenhower's

strategy was cooperation among the services and between the two

major Western Allies. Even though the United States had

relatively little experience with joint military operations,

cooperation among the services--"jointness"--was less a problem
for Eisenhower than for American strategists in the Pacific. 

During combat operations in Europe and North Africa, the Navy's

role was clearly secondary. It provided transportation of troops

and supplies and covering gunfire for initial landings, but the

Army led during the bulk of the campaigns. Land warfare, where

combined arms operations among infantry, artillery, and calvary

were the rule, made armies at least potentially amenable to

cooperation among disparate military organizations. By World War

II, of course, the primary jointness issue was between land and

air forces.

Cooperation among the Allies--"combined" considerations--

demanded greater effort on the part of the Supreme Commander. 

When Americans and British worked together, the effects of

disparate approaches to warfare, disparate institutional

cultures, and disparate methods and techniques filtered down to

the lowest level. But between the common language of the two

Western Allies and the range of shared political and cultural

traditions there was an adequate base for cooperation. Still, it

took serious and sustained effort on Eisenhower's part to assure

efficient cooperation. The foundation was Eisenhower's

insistence on an integrated headquarters staff. This began

during the planning for Operation TORCH. It was, according to

E.K.G. Sixsmith, Eisenhower's "special contribution to the

practice of war."54 He was adamant about cooperation toward the

shared goal and in his opposition to any sense of intra-Allied

competition or conflict. Eisenhower replicated the integrated

staff structure for OVERLORD.

Effectiveness is simply a strategy-making structure that can

get decisions implemented as intended and in a timely fashion. 

It results from a strong-willed commander supported by his

political superiors. The commander must trust subordinates

enough to delegate authority and yet, through strength of

character and vision, assure that delegated authority contributes

to the overall attainment of objectives. In the joint and

combined strategy-making environment which Eisenhower led, unity

of command was the central component of structural effectiveness.

 In fact, Eisenhower considered it an absolute prerequisite in

modern war. "[S]tatesmen, generals, admirals, and air marshals--

even populations," he wrote, "must develop confidence in the

concept of single command and in the leader by which the single

command is exercised."55

Belief in the need for unity of command is a dimension of

strategy where Eisenhower was strongly influenced by George

Marshall. Following the ARCADIA conference, Marshall directed

Eisenhower to draft a paper establishing unity of command in

Southeast Asia.56 From this and other papers written while at the

War Department, it was clear that Eisenhower considered unity of

command not just applicable to the Pacific theater, but a

universal principle of joint and combined warfare. In fact, the

problems which arose from attempts to unify efforts in the

Pacific under a single commander reinforced Eisenhower's belief
in this principle.57 Marshall agreed. Eisenhower's memos on

unity of command were more to provide arguments for use by the

Chief of Staff than to convince him.58

Finally, Eisenhower excelled in understanding, at least of

himself, his superiors, and his subordinates. His sensitivity to

the peculiarities of fighting a total war with a coalition of

democracies was reflected in his relationship with his superiors.

The fact that Churchill and Roosevelt were strong and competent

leaders who agreed on the broad contours of Allied strategy and

were in frequent contact augmented strategic coherence.59

Eisenhower thus did not face the same dilemma as many of his

German counterparts who received confusing, impossible, bad, and

overly detailed national strategic guidance.

In general, Eisenhower's relationship with Roosevelt was

smooth. With a few exceptions such as the launching of Operation

TORCH, the President had no desire to make detailed military

decisions. George Marshall, who had close ties with both

Eisenhower and Roosevelt, assured cooperation between president

and commander. The relationship between the two generals was

especially important. They complemented each other and their

association eventually became symbiotic. Stephen E. Ambrose

writes:

Marshall's strengths were in the higher levels of

policy, organization, and strategy. In these areas

Eisenhower followed, for he was an operator rather than

a theoretician, the perfect man to take Marshall's

concepts and translate them into practice. The Supreme

Allied Command in Europe would never have come about

had it not been for Marshall's thought, driving force,

and persuasive powers, but it would not have worked had

it not been for Eisenhower.60

Roosevelt's deference to Eisenhower on strictly military

issues was a good thing. The two had different tolerances for

risk. Roosevelt held a consistently higher estimation than

Eisenhower of the American people's tolerance for the human and

material costs of war. He was, in addition, less patient than

Eisenhower and much more a connoisseur of the bold and

imaginative. But this dissonance never endangered strategic

coherence and probably benefitted the inherently cautious

general. As is so often true of coherent strategies, divergent

approaches, personalities, and talents among key figures are not

debilitating so long as each recognizes his own limitations and

the strengths of the others.

Eisenhower's relationship with Churchill was more

problematic and more of a threat to the coherence of Allied

strategy. While the two men got along very well on a personal

level, Eisenhower worried that the Prime Minister was affected

too much by the need to justify the peripheral strategy which

failed in World War I through the disaster at Gallipoli. 
Furthermore Churchill--as the descendent of Marlborough and a

veteran of a number of wars--considered himself fully capable of

making detailed decisions about military operations and strategy.

 This combination of slightly different approaches to Allied

strategy and a willingness to intervene in military decision

making on the part of the Prime Minister was a real and

persistent threat to strategic coherence.

In handling this challenge, Eisenhower knew that once the

American contribution to the war effort surpassed that of the

British, Churchill could only impose strategic decisions on the

Americans if they bickered and disagreed among themselves. Thus

the Supreme Commander gave special care to reaching and

preserving consensus within the Eisenhower-Marshall- Roosevelt

triumvirate. In addition, Eisenhower's growing personal

popularity augmented his power to resist Churchill. As a result,

Churchill could insist, beg, cajole, and bluster when he

disagreed with Eisenhower's position on issues such as Operation

ANVIL, but so long as the American consensus held, Eisenhower

prevailed.

The Supreme Commander's relationship with troops was

excellent. His ability to motivate them, to cause them to follow

his lead willingly rather than by fear, was legendary. In large

part this was because Eisenhower genuinely liked and respected

his troops and spent as much time as possible with them. In

fact, Eisenhower was convinced that top leaders must stay in

personal contact with troops and, to an extent, share their

danger. "One of the things that gives me the most concern," he

wrote during the North Africa campaign, "is the habit of some of

our generals in staying too close to their command posts."61

The informal style of leadership worked particularly well

for Americans, steeped as they were in an anti-elite culture.

(Admittedly, the more European and elitist leadership styles of

Patton and MacArthur--when bolstered by boldness and success--

also worked with American troops.) Furthermore, Eisenhower

continually stressed that the American soldier needed to

understand the rationale for the war. He saw Americans as

inherently more skeptical of the implorations of political

leaders than Europeans, and thus less likely to sublimate their

free spirits to a cause which they did not understand. Unlike

Patton or MacArthur who led by imposing their will and authority

on subordinates and troops, Eisenhower "was patient, clear and

logical in his explanations to his officers and men about why

things had to be done this way or that."62

In many other ways, Eisenhower recognized the special sort

of leadership required in a total war involving open democracies

using citizen armies. In this, at least, Eisenhower was the

perfect complement to Churchill. But while the apex of

Eisenhower's leadership, unlike that of Churchill, came after the

point of crisis and prime danger for the Allies rather than at

its peak, he was forced to meld together two militaries and two
cultures, a task the Prime Minister never faced. "The ability to

get people of different nationalities and viewpoints to work

together," according to Forest C. Pogue, was Eisenhower's most

important trait.63 His accomplishments in this arena are awesome,

especially considering that with Franklin Roosevelt, Winston

Churchill, Charles deGaulle, Bernard Montgomery, and George

Patton, Eisenhower worked more or less smoothly with some of the

most mammoth egos in human history.

Skill at harmonizing diverse and powerful personalities, in

fact, propelled Eisenhower to the strategic pinnacle. Ambrose

writes:

Eisenhower's emphasis on teamwork, his never-flagging

insistence on working together, was the single most

important reason for his selection [as commander of

OVERLORD], much more important than his generalship,

which in truth had been cautious and hesitant.64

When first sent to Europe in 1942, Eisenhower knew that his

primary function was to rejuvenate morale among the Americans

there and control intra-alliance squabbling.65 Stress on

sustaining high morale in both his staff and his troops dominated

Eisenhower's approach to wartime leadership. In fact, he called

morale "the greatest single factor in a successful war."66

Eisenhower's actions showed evidence of this conviction. 

According to Harry C. Butcher:

What concerned the Commanding General most was the

cultivation of determined enthusiasm and optimism in

every member of his staff and every subordinate

commander. He refused to tolerate pessimism or

defeatism and urged anyone who could not rise above the

recognized obstacles to ask for instant release from

his theater. He urged the greatest informality in the

staff work, put himself at the disposition of his

subordinates, but told them they are free to solve

their own problems and not get into the habit of

passing the buck to him.67

However skilled Eisenhower was at selecting staff and

subordinate commanders, he was not particularly good at

cultivating unrealized talent. Subordinate commanders and staff

had to perform or leave. When an officer disappointed him, he

immediately asked Marshall for a replacement.68 The complexities

of modern war, Eisenhower believed, made a commander tremendously

reliant on smooth staff work. He wrote:

. . . the teams and staff though which the modern

commander absorbs information and exercises his

authority must be a beautifully interlocked,

smooth-working mechanism. The personalities of senior

commanders and staff officers are of special

importance. Professional military ability and strength
of character, always required in high military

positions, are often marred by unfortunate

characteristics. The two most frequently encountered

and hurtful ones being a too obvious avidity for public

acclaim and the delusion that strength of purpose

demands arrogant and even insufferable deportment.69

Finally, strategic coherence in a democracy requires that

the strategist understand public attitudes and, when possible,

craft strategy in congruence with them. Eisenhower excelled at

this. His talent for public relations, according to Ambrose, "set

him apart from his two chiefs, MacArthur and Marshall, neither of

whom ever established anything like the good relations with the

press that Eisenhower did."70 The Supreme Commander was relaxed

and believable dealing with the media, and thus established an

effective rapport. His humility was especially important. This

was not simply a natural dimension of Eisenhower's personality,

but was a tool used by the Supreme Commander in crafting the

proper public image. "[S]ome publicity," he wrote, "is mandatory

[for high-level commanders]--otherwise American soldiers would

not know they had an American commander, interested in their

welfare. The problem is to take it and use it in the amount

required by the job; but to avoid distortion and

self-glorification."71 Clearly, Eisenhower saw that public trust

of the Supreme Commander provided some insurance against a

backlash against a military failure, and thus diminished the

inherent risk of his strategic plans.

The dyadic component of strategic coherence was a different

matter. Eisenhower did not exhibit any debilitating imbalances

like a Hitler or Napoleon, but on all clusters he was skewed,

with a definite, patterned set of preferences. In terms of

characteristics, for example, he was managerial rather than

entrepreneurial. The General's attitude toward boldness provides

a good illustration. In considering boldness, Clausewitz wrote,

"A soldier, whether drummer boy or general, can possess no nobler

quality; it is the very metal that gives edge and luster to the

sword."72 Boldness, like surprise, unsettles the enemy's plans

and, by increasing anxiety, diminishes his ability to think and

act clearly. More importantly, boldness in a commander is the

surest path to seizing and holding the initiative which is, in

turn, a prerequisite for victory by an impatient people like the

Americans.73

Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower's foremost biographer, argues

that the Supreme Commander's campaign in northwest Europe "showed

boldness and willingness to take risks."74 This is an

oversimplification. In strategy, there are two paths to the

initiative. One is the unexpected: a strategic commander can

create expectations through a consistent pattern of action, and

then break his own pattern. Similarly, he can deliberately

ignore "rules" of war generally accepted by professionals. 

Robert E. Lee, for example, seized the tactical initiative at

Second Bull Run and Chancellorsville by ignoring the maxim "never
divide your force in the face of a superior enemy." (Of course,

ignoring maxims can itself become a pattern which the enemy then

expects and accommodates. Splitting his forces when in imminent

contact with the enemy nearly proved disastrous for Lee at

Sharpsburg and did contribute to defeat at Gettysburg.) The

second path is grinding, persistent offensive with little

surprise or creativity. Grant's 1864-65 campaign, with the

exception of the bold initial assault on Petersburg, was

characterized by this method.

Eisenhower, as a student of the approach to war fathered by

Grant, followed the latter path to the initiative, but certainly

not the former. Even Stephen Ambrose, who on most points

praises Eisenhower, notes his "indecisiveness and caution on the

military front."75 After the landing at Normandy, the Allied

Supreme Commander seldom if ever did anything that surprised the

Germans. In fact, Eisenhower was often the victim of German

boldness such as the counterattacks at Kasserine in 1942 and the

Ardennes in 1944. In pre- OVERLORD campaigns, Eisenhower was

consistently unable to boldly take advantage of temporary German

weakness and thus engineered plodding stalemates in Africa and

Italy which were only broken by attrition.76

The Supreme Commander was, however, the master of the sort

of initiative through persistent offensive pioneered by Grant. 

While plotting global strategy in 1942 he knew, "We had to attack

to win."77 As Supreme Commander, he advocated the continual

offensive and was willing to accept the costs and risks of such

an approach. In defending his strategy prior to the German

Ardennes offensive, Eisenhower wrote:

Essentially the German winter offensive was made

possible because of my determination to remain on the

strategic and tactical offensive from the date we

landed on the beaches of Normandy until the German Army

should have been beaten to its knees. There were any

number of times, and any number of lines at which I

could have passed to the defensive, made the entire

Allied position absolutely secure and waited for a

laborious build-up which would have made cautious

advances possible with a minimum of risk, but which

would certainly have resulted in a material

prolongation of the war...The policy of unrelenting

offensive during the fall and winter demanded

concentration at the points selected for attack. This

inevitably meant taking calculated risks at other

places and one of these was the Ardennes region.78

All tactical decisions during the breakout and pursuit,

Eisenhower argued, involved risk, "but it was my conviction that

a flaming offensive, conducted relentlessly and continuously and

under conditions where, regardless of enemy reaction, we would

always be in a position to take advantage of the situation, was

the true course for us to follow."79
This showed an astute understanding of the American

strategic culture. Our impatience as a people, along with the

influence of the public over strategy, means that political risk

increases steadily during a protracted war. The American people

are better able to accept short-term military defeats (Pearl

Harbor, the Philippines, Kasserine) than extended conflict. That

meant that Eisenhower had to be willing to accept the risks which

the strategy of constant offensive entailed in order to shorten

the war as much as possible. He understood this and acted

accordingly.

In the style cluster, Eisenhower was more balanced, with a

slight tendency toward the soft. He overcame this tendency with

a masterful use of symbiosis, specifically the cultivation of

relationships with other individuals who had different but

complementary skills. There are many examples including

Eisenhower's symbiotic relationships with the broad views and

strategic vision of Marshall, the bold and creative Churchill, or

the aggressive and brazen Patton. In the day-to-day running of

SHAEF, Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's chief of staff, was a

perfect counterpoise to the Supreme Commander. Where Eisenhower

was friendly, personable, and likeable, Smith "was the kind of

manager and hatchet man who had been able to fire without

compunction an old friend who had failed."80

Eisenhower's reliance on Smith was perfectly coherent. 

Different people react differently to positive or negative

feedback, to persuasion or imposition. No strategic commander

can be both tyrant and siren. Yet true effectiveness in

management comes from a combination of the hard and the soft, the

"good cop" and "bad cop." Eisenhower and Smith--like Eisenhower

and MacArthur in earlier times--made such a team, improved the

functioning of SHAEF headquarters, and thus augmented the

coherence of Allied strategy.

The same was true of Eisenhower's relationship with major

subordinate commanders. He and Omar Bradley were close in

personality type, but Patton, Montgomery, and Field Marshal Sir

Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, were cut from a

different bolt of cloth. Eisenhower recognized the value of

Patton's brilliant boldness and used it while assuring that he

and Bradley were able to keep it in check.81 Eisenhower wrote

about Patton:

His emotional tenseness and his impulsiveness were the

very qualities that made him, in open situations, such

a remarkable leader of an army. In pursuit and

exploitation there is need for a commander who sees

nothing but the necessity of getting ahead; the more he

drives his men the more he will save their lives. He

must be indifferent to fatigue and ruthless in

demanding the last atom of physical energy.82
Again, harmony among dissonant elements led to coherence.

Eisenhower's ability to use the diverse personalities of

subordinates--Bradley when steadiness was needed and Patton when

boldness was required--was masterful.

Montgomery was more difficult. Because the Field Marshal

was the senior British officer in the field, Eisenhower could not

control him as easily as Patton. Eisenhower and Patton had been

friends and colleagues for decades. They shared the traditions

and common values generated by the institutional culture of the

U.S. Army. This eased communications. Eisenhower and

Montgomery, on the other hand, seldom fully understood one

another.83 Furthermore, Montgomery's quirks did not have the

potential value of Patton's. Where Patton was difficult but

imaginative, hard to control but bold, Montgomery was simply

difficult and hard to control. In this relationship, then, the

dictates of Allied unity diminished strategic coherence despite

Eisenhower's best efforts.

In the driver cluster, Eisenhower exhibited more imbalance.

Internal factors dominated external, often to the detriment of

flexibility and initiative. Whether as planner or commander, the

Allied buildup, especially of important items such as landing

craft, determined the timing of the campaigns rather than the

actions of the Germans or Soviet progress on the Eastern Front.

For focus, Eisenhower leaned toward the short term. 

Critics--including Winston Churchill--argued that Eisenhower was

too slow in the spring of 1945 to recognize that Germany was

defeated and to maneuver his forces so as to best position the

West for the coming confrontation with the Soviet Union.84 In

fact, Eisenhower carefully considered and rejected a drive on

Berlin or into the Balkans.85 As Kent Robert Greenfield noted,

the Americans "acted on the assumption that the Soviet Union

could take what it wanted in Eastern and Central Europe whether

we consented or not."86

Mitigators.

Eisenhower inherited rather than created much of his

warfighting strategy in World War II. Like all military

strategists who are not also makers of national policy, he worked

within strict parameters. His role was to take and interpret

guidance from national decision makers, draw military objectives

from it, and attain, promote, or protect these objectives. For

all military decision makers, there is a sliding scale of

autonomy. When a military strategist is also a head of state

like Napoleon or Hitler, his autonomy is great; the autonomy of a

platoon leader is very constrained. Eisenhower's autonomy was

greater than that of the German generals and field marshals he

confronted, but was limited. At the same time, he also faced

larger, more systemic constraints. For example, Eisenhower

emerged from a strategic culture steeped in isolationism,
unilateralism, and a rationalistic rather than psychological

approach to the application of power. The mitigators Eisenhower

faced and how he dealt with them profoundly affected the

coherence of his strategy.

Perhaps the most pressing type of mitigator was the

political. Strategic coherence is always more difficult in a

democracy. Many political groups can influence the strategymaking process in some way, and all strategic decisions are tried

in the court of public opinion. Because democracy is a political

system explicitly designed to ameliorate conflict without

violence, it is comparatively inefficient when facing violence. 

Democracies certainly win wars, but as a rule, do so less

efficiently than a nondemocracy in a similar situation. 

Likewise, coalitions militate coherence, again because of

conflicting objectives, but also because of diverse perceptions,

philosophies, and tolerance for risk. Since Eisenhower led the

military forces of a coalition of democracies, the obstacles to

coherence were great indeed.

To amplify the problem, the structure for setting Allied

grand strategy was not designed for maximum coherence. Not only

were there two coequal heads of state guiding strategy

formulation, but both were strong and supremely political. The

formation of the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) did add coherence

to the strategic guidance that Eisenhower received. He was

seldom forced to deal with differences at the level of grand

strategy since these were already worked out by the chiefs. 

During the course of the war, the CCS had 200 formal meetings

and, according to Winston Churchill, "considered the whole

conduct of the war, and submitted agreed recommendations to the

President and me."87

The broadest and most enduring obstacle to coherence in

Eisenhower's strategy was divergent strategic philosophies or

approaches to warfighting on the part of the Western Allies. The

Americans believed in:

a war of mass and concentration...a decisive war

leading to the defeat of the enemies' armies. [This]

reflected American optimism and confidence in the

industrial machine to produce the military hardware and

the faith of the military in the ability to raise,

equip, train, and lead a large citizen army for

offensive purposes.88

Army planners thus felt:

An army strong enough to choose the strategy of

annihilation should always choose it, because the most

certain and probably the most rapid route to victory

lay through the destruction of the enemy's armed

forces. To destroy the enemy army, the only proven way

remained the application of mass and concentration in
the manner of U.S. Grant.89

This was warfare by attrition--attaining victory by the

cumulative destruction of the enemy's material and human assets.

 "An attritionist," according to current U.S. Marine Corps

doctrine, "sees the enemy as targets to be engaged and destroyed

systematically. Thus, the focus is on efficiency, leading to a

methodical, almost scientific approach to war. With the emphasis

on the efficient application of massed, accurate fires, movement

tends to be ponderous and tempo relatively unimportant."90 This

sort of attrition warfare would be reflected in Eisenhower's

direct and aggressive warfighting strategy.

British strategic culture, by contrast, favored the indirect

approach to victory. J.M.A. Gwyer described it as a "more supple

type of strategy, which seeks to gain its ends by the skillful

employment of limited means..."91 In contrast to American

tradition, the British relied more heavily on psychological

skill, surprise, deception, and the gradual wearing down of the

enemy's will to resist. In this sense, the British approach was

steeped more in Sun Tzu than in Clausewitz.92 Facing the Third

Reich, British grand strategists decided that:

The enemy had to be contained, his economy strained and

starved by blockade, his resources and population worn

down by air bombardment, and only when his morale was

on the point of collapse would a direct blow be struck

at his armies. It was an offensive strategy of a kind

if not the offensive quite as the Americans understood

it.93

These differing approaches to war are easy to understand. 

Britain, given its relatively small population, geographic

isolation, commercialism, and control of the sea, historically

practiced something like the indirect approach in national

security strategy. In seeking to prevent any single power from

dominating the European continent, Britain used commercial power

to subsidize continental allies, sea power to blockade potential

continental hegemons and force them to disperse their strength,

and land power when necessary and potentially decisive.94 The

indirect approach called for avoiding the heart of a land power's

strength and instead attacking weak areas such as Napoleon's

Iberian empire and Imperial Germany's Turkish ally. When combat

was necessary, maneuver was the byword. Fighting was, as Richard

E. Simpkin puts it, "only one way of applying military force to

the attainment of a politico-economic aim--and a rather inelegant

last resort at that."95

British strategy in World War I was an interregnum, a bloody

detour into the realm of attrition strategy. Its economic and

human cost renewed the preference for the indirect approach. 

Strategic tradition was elevated to canon; support for the

indirect approach, for flexibility, and imagination, verged on

the religious. Churchill, for example, wrote:
Nearly all battles which are regarded as masterpieces

of the military art, from which have been derived the

foundation of states and the fame of commanders, have

been battles of manoeuvre in which the enemy has found

himself defeated by some novel expedient or device,

some queer, swift, unexpected thrust or stratagem. 

There is required for the composition of a great

commander not only massive common sense and reasoning

power, not only imagination, but also an element of

legerdemain, an original and sinister touch which

leaves the enemy puzzled as well as beaten.96

B.H. Liddell Hart, the doyen of British strategic theorists,

pushed the argument even further. He considered the indirect

approach "a law of life in all spheres: a truth of philosophy."97

 As much as any single factor, the desire to avoid another Somme,

Ypres, or Passchendaele drove British decision making in World

War II. The Americans, though bloodied by the use of direct

strategies in 1918 and in Grant's 1864-65 campaign, had won their

major wars without unbearable losses. Thus strategic dissonance

between the Allies was rooted in their histories. Eisenhower

could not change this, but recognized the need to keep it from

becoming debilitating.

There were some shared features of British and American

strategic culture for him to work with. But there were also

distinctions. For the Americans, impatience (which is a

cornerstone of American culture in general), a massive industrial

and technological base and a larger manpower pool led to a

modified attritional approach to warfare. This substituted

firepower for bloodshed when possible, but--given American

impatience--accepted large-scale casualties when necessary to

procure victory before public support ran out. Thus the British

approach accorded low casualties a higher priority than quick

victory, while the American approach reversed the two.

The British and Americans were also divided by a fundamental

difference in the way they understood the relationship of the

enemy's armed forces and national will. For the Americans, the

enemy's armed forces were the direct route to the heart of

national will. If they were destroyed, will collapsed. For the

British, the enemy's armed forces were more a reflection of the

state of national will. Since destroying opposing armies,

navies, and air forces was the most costly way to erode the

enemy's national will, cheaper techniques such as economic

blockade and strategic bombing were preferred. When a blood cost

could not be avoided, better it was paid by allies, whether

Soviets or French Resistance, than by British forces. (Once the

need for direct engagement was clear, though, the British never

shirked whether at Waterloo or Normandy.)

Understanding the Allies' diverse strategic cultures was

relatively simple; reconciling them--as Eisenhower had to do--was
not. Preserving alliance comity and unity of command thus became

an obsession of the Supreme Commander and one his most pressing

problems. For the Western Allies, there were three primary

obstacles to unity of command. The first was the British

tradition of giving broad powers and autonomy to the separate

component commanders. While not as loose as the Japanese system

where joint operations were literally negotiated on an ad hoc

basis between army and navy commanders, the British did favor

command by committee rather than unity of command. Throughout

the war, the Americans and Eisenhower in particular pressed for

unity of command, while the British advocated a greater

devolution of authority to component commanders. For example, at

the Casablanca conference in January 1943, the British

re-proposed the committee system for the invasion of Sicily, and

after the breakout from the Normandy beachhead, Montgomery

repeatedly asked to be named the single ground commander with

far-reaching power.98 Eisenhower resisted all such pleas.

The second obstacle was the autonomy of the British and

American strategic air forces in England, particularly in the

period preceding OVERLORD. In preparation for the cross-channel

invasion, Eisenhower wanted to use the strategic air forces to

destroy the French and Belgian railroad network, and thus

complicate or prevent German attempts to reinforce and resupply

forces in Normandy. This became known as the "transportation

plan" and was strongly supported by Air Chief Marshal Sir

Trafford Leigh-Mallory, Eisenhower's air component commander, and

Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder, Eisenhower's deputy commander.99

Strategic bomber commanders including British Air Chief

Marshall Arthur Harris and Americans General Carl Spaatz and

Major General James H. Doolittle resisted.100 The transportation

plan, they felt, would bleed resources away from attempts to

cripple German fighter production and thus endanger the winning

of air superiority which was absolutely vital for the success of

OVERLORD. Furthermore, they still believed that the strategic

bomber offensive was on the verge of forcing a German collapse,

and thus a cross-channel invasion was not necessary.101 Using

strategic bombing forces operationally, as Eisenhower wanted,

would, according to the air strategists, make the war longer and

bloodier. Again Eisenhower was adamant. Eventually a compromise

was reached by which the strategic bomber commanders would strike

operational level targets in France, but would be under the

direct command of Eisenhower and report to Tedder, rather than to

Leigh-Mallory, the tactical air component commander.

The third obstacle was Montgomery. Although he was under

the direct command of Eisenhower, Montgomery was also the senior

British commander in theater, and thus had direct ties to

Churchill. On a number of occasions he used this to attempt to

enlist the Prime Minister's help in forcing Eisenhower to change

his mind on issues like support for the narrow thrust or the

appointment of a single ground commander separate from the

Supreme Commander.
Eisenhower's conflict with Montgomery, as much as any single

issue, showed how coalition politics can mitigate structural

coherence. And despite Eisenhower's frequent paeans to unity of

command, allied cooperation--unity of effort--was clearly more

important. Military thinkers often treat unity of effort and

unity of command as synonymous or at least as dimensions of the

same phenomenon.102 In reality, they are not. For Eisenhower, in

fact, the two were sometimes in direct conflict. When this

occurred, Eisenhower leaned toward coalition amity at the expense

of the boldness and clarity which derive from strong centralized

control and command. Again, coherence was a series of delicate

balances. And again, Eisenhower's strategy was not markedly

imbalanced, but clearly tilted toward the conservative and

cautious.

Assessment.

As a product of the American strategic tradition, Eisenhower

was imminently comfortable with the direct, linear, materialistic

mode of warfare mastered by Grant. He was thus strong in the

linear component of strategic coherence with special emphasis on

synchronization, clarity, and morale--all factors whose

importance was increased by the complexity of large-scale

coalition warfare involving democracies. The Supreme Commander

understood that the focus of effort in crafting strategic

coherence varied according to the type of conflict faced.

Eisenhower also had an astute understanding of the role of

the individual strategic leader in the modern era. Unlike a

Napoleon or Hitler who longed for the days when a single heroic

leader could arrogate all key decisions to himself, Eisenhower

recognized that modern warfare required more leadership

characteristics and capabilities than any one individual could

possibly have. He thus delegated authority skillfully and sought

symbiotic relationships with other leaders whose skills

complemented his own.

On the negative side, Eisenhower was cautious, sometimes to

the point of debility. To some extent, this can be explained by

his reading of strategic trends. He knew that time was on the

side of the Allies. As the United States mobilized its industry

and manpower, the balance would increasingly favor the Allies. 

There was, therefore, no rush to complete the defeat of Nazi

Germany. But there were other factors. One was probably a lack

of confidence in untested American troops and leaders, especially

in the North Africa campaign.

Eisenhower's desire to minimize Allied casualties also

generated caution, but in this case, Montgomery and Patton's

warnings that boldness would, in the long term, lessen the blood

cost of the war by bringing it to a more rapid conclusion were

probably correct. Personality factors, then, kept Eisenhower from
seeking the bold, the shocking, or the surprising move. He found

an operational pattern that worked--albeit at a cost--and

ploddingly kept to it. This prevented him from fully exploiting

opportunities, especially those that existed when German

resistance temporarily collapsed after the breakout from

Normandy.

The key question is: Did Eisenhower maximize strategic

coherence given the mitigators? The answer is: Almost. With all

other elements of his approach to strategy held constant but his

aversion to boldness altered slightly, it is possible that the

war could have been shortened with Allied political objectives

still attained. But because Eisenhower attained these objectives

at an acceptable cost, he did little critical examination of his

approach to strategy, but rather counted it as a success and as a

model for emulation during later periods of strategic leadership.
CHAPTER 3

DETERRENCE

Introduction.

During the second phase of Eisenhower's career as a

strategist he was Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army and NATO's

first Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR). Since he held

both of these positions during peacetime, the strategies he

helped construct were designed for deterrence rather than

warfighting. His general approach was to translate what had

worked during wartime into deterrent strategy, a technique that

brought both successes and shortcomings.

The threat to national security is never as clear in

peacetime as during war. This rather obvious fact carries

far-reaching implications. It means, for instance, that the

guardians of national security must develop broad strategic

constructs in an amorphous and ambiguous context. To someone

like Eisenhower who sought and thrived on clarity, this was

difficult. As a deterrent strategist he longed constantly for

such clarity. "I personally believe," he wrote to Bedell Smith,

"that it is not only vital that we decide upon the general plan

we must follow but that we determine also the areas in which we

can concentrate most advantageously."103 Unfortunately, longing

can cloud reality, and Eisenhower often flirted with the

dangerous oversimplification which arises when the inherently

complex is treated as if it were simple.

In addition, the peacetime strategist faces many more

constraints on his autonomy than either the warfighting or grand

strategist. The power that accrues to a warfighter due to danger

or to a grand strategist due to political authority is dispersed.

 Horizontal leadership--the ability to motivate, move, and

convince coequals--rises in importance compared to command in the

pure sense. Eisenhower noted "Leadership is as vital in

conference as it is in battle."104 He might also have added that

it is leadership of a different type, requiring a different set

of skills.

At the same time, peacetime strategy, with its more

amorphous threat, offers opportunities for the exercise of

creativity. The actions of the enemy in war are dictatorial,

rigidly drawing the boundaries of the rational and the feasible.

 In conflict short of war where risk is lessened or, at least,

cloudier, more is possible. But peacetime strategy also demands

greater skill in the dyadic realm of strategic coherence. The

deterrent strategist must create and nurture dynamic balances. 

He must craft strength without intimidation and popular support

without fervor. Peacetime strategy is also more inward-looking

as morale and organization take on greater importance. Given all

this, both opportunities and pitfalls abound.
For the military strategist trained as a warfighter,

deterrence can be frustrating. The psychological aspects

outweigh the physical as the goal is to create beliefs, images,

and perceptions in the minds of enemies and allies rather than to

seize, hold, or destroy. New demands are placed on the

strategist--to understand the intricacies of alien cultures and

to manipulate the arcane link between physical actions and mental

images through the prism of this culture. Although hampered by

an insular upbringing and education that gave him little contact

with foreign mindsets, Eisenhower proved an astute enough

psychologist to meet with moderate success as a deterrent

strategist.

Context.

In contrast to World War II, Eisenhower did not inherit a

prefabricated strategic plan to be fleshed-out and translated

into operational plans. Instead he found a grand strategic

tabula rasa where he was a secondary actor. Only gradually did

the vague strategic concepts of 1945 give birth to a coherent

grand strategy. For Eisenhower, this ongoing development of

American grand strategy was helpful but did not, at first, free

him from the complications which arise when attempting to build a

military strategy on a weak and amorphous grand strategic

foundation.

At the end of World War II, the United States combined

immense power with inexperience and uncertainty about the

appropriate exercise of this power. From strategic immaturity

arose hesitancy and, at times, a debilitating nostalgia. This

was easily understood. Not only did the United States have to

shake off its lingering isolationism, but it was also forced to

assume global leadership during one of the most trying times in

human history. The war had truly signalled the destruction of the

old international system. Even more importantly, it had

unleashed forces which challenged and, in some cases, destroyed

the internal social, economic, and political systems of states. 

The world was inundated with simmering, sometimes exploding

discontent and rapid change. And all of this, it seemed, was

made worse by the activities of a wounded but still-dangerous

Soviet Union.

The American grand strategy which emerged, of course, was

containment.105 Put simply, we jettisoned isolationism and

exercised leadership in all elements of national power to prevent

the spread of Soviet influence and communism, first in Europe,

and later in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. 

What remained for strategic planners--including Eisenhower--was

to make containment operational.

One of the key tasks in this process was to define the role

of military power within American grand strategy. The initial
hope of the architects of post war grand strategy was that

military power would have little utility. When it was used, it

was to be in pursuit of collective security under the aegis of

the United Nations. But the beginning of the cold war and the

emergence of a hostile Soviet Union which had not, in American

eyes, demobilized after the defeat of the Nazis, altered any

conclusions about the disutility of military power. What the

United States needed, then, was a military strategy that would

support the new grand strategy. As Chief of Staff and SACEUR,

Eisenhower attempted to fulfill this need.

Coherence.

The basis of any coherent strategy is a clear and equally

coherent conceptual framework. For Eisenhower's warfighting

strategy, this combined Allied grand strategy was designed by

Roosevelt, Churchill, and their lieutenants with the traditional

American approach to war pioneered by Lincoln, Grant, Sherman,

and Sheridan. Peacetime deterrent strategy required a somewhat

different framework. To construct this, Eisenhower began with an

assessment of the postwar global security environment. He

concluded that the world was "in a rather sorry mess..."106 All

the optimism spawned by the defeat of Nazism, Fascism, and

Japanese imperialism and the rise of new international

institutions like the United Nations quickly evaporated. Reasons

included the damage from the war, the collapse of the old

international order, widespread malaise, rapid change within

nations, and, most of all, the machinations and aggressiveness of

the Soviet Union. The pervasive attitude in the West went from

euphoria to despair--not a fertile ground for a steady and

resolute strategy.

Immediately after the war, hope of continued Allied

cooperation lingered so, Eisenhower noted, it was forbidden to

refer to the Soviets as enemies during budget requests before

Congress.107 Even as relations between Washington and Moscow

soured, Eisenhower's view of the Soviets, based on his experience

with wartime cooperation, was rather benign when compared to

Truman and his top foreign policymakers. Without gauging

intentions, Eisenhower the military planner was convinced that

the damage suffered by the Soviet Union during World War II would

keep Moscow from launching a war for some time.108 He thus

concluded that much of the anxiety in the West was overblown.

By 1947, Eisenhower's attitude toward the Soviets hardened.

 He saw Moscow as aggressive, but not in the suicidal fashion of

the Nazis. It was, instead, a more subtle aggression stressing

political manipulation, subterfuge, intimidation, and propaganda.

 This had serious implications for the importance of military

power in American grand strategy. Taking a position somewhat

less bellicose than Truman's, Eisenhower believed that Moscow was

not preparing for war, and thus a political resolution of the

cold war was at least possible.109
Like George Kennan, the intellectual architect of

containment, Eisenhower felt that the Soviets combined great

strength with great weakness. They did retain a massive army and

could count on communists, fellow-travellers, and front

organizations worldwide, but at the same time, the Soviet system

was fragile because "it suppresses the natural and decent

aspirations of men."110 And again like Kennan, Eisenhower was

convinced that the nature of the Soviet system meant that only

counter-power could deter Moscow's attempt at world domination. 

He wrote:

The Communists have clearly proved that in the

international field they respect no law but force. The

free world has no choice but to develop a volume of

force that will prevent even the misguided Communists

from putting their case to the test of arms.111

What was needed was active U.S. engagement around the globe

to engineer and orchestrate anti-Communist coalitions. 

Eisenhower was an early and persistent advocate of this, arguing

the United States must "assert the full influence deriving from

our financial, economic, political and military power..."112 Even

more than simple engagement, it was mandatory that the United

States exercise leadership of the non-Communist world. In a

letter to Edward Hazlett, Jr., Eisenhower wrote:

. . . American leadership must be exerted every minute

of the day, every day, to make sure that we are

securing from these combined countries their maximum of

accomplishment. Where any nation fails--as some of

them are, of course, partially failing now--we must

take a certain portion of the responsibility by

admitting that in that particular instance, our

leadership has been partially ineffective.113

Geostrategically, Eisenhower was convinced that the security

and freedom of Europe were the primary U.S. national security

objectives, and thus required the most serious and sustained

attention. In fact, the outcome of the cold war in Europe would

largely determine its course on the global stage. "[T]here is an

inescapable relationship between attainment of NATO objectives,"

Eisenhower wrote to Averell Harriman, "and the numerous

aggressions and activities of the Communists in many fronts

throughout the world."114 In the long term, though, Eisenhower

thought direct American predominance should be limited. The goal

was a short period where U.S. assistance would rejuvenate the

spirit, economies, and militaries of the non-Communist world. In

1951, Eisenhower argued the United States should "strive for a

very intensive but relatively short program of American

assistance which should begin to pass its peak, especially in

ground force content, within two and one-half or three years."115

The limited nature of intensive American involvement in
Europe was an enduring theme of Eisenhower's view of the global

security environment. He wrote:

Europe must, as a whole, provide in the long run for

its own defense. The United States can move in and, by

its psychological, intellectual, and material

leadership, help to produce arms, units, and the

confidence that will allow Europe to solve its problem.

 In the long run it is not possible--and most certainly

not desirable--that Europe should be an occupied

territory defended by legions brought in from abroad,

somewhat in the fashion that Rome's territories vainly

sought security many hundred years ago.116

Eventually, then, "each country must provide the heart and

soul of its own defense."117 There was no acceptable alternative,

Eisenhower believed, to collective security.118

By the end of the 1940s, Eisenhower had developed a clearer

notion of the fundamental nature of the cold war, and came to

view it as a manichaean clash of fundamentally incompatible

ideas, not simply a tragic series of misunderstandings among old

allies. Under such conditions, victory rather than accommodation

was the goal. This line of thought was important to Eisenhower's

maturation as a strategist. True strategic coherence must

reflect a deeper and broader understanding of the meaning,

purpose, and role of conflict in a given age. Eisenhower was

slowly moving toward this state.

"The theory of defense against aggressive threat," he wrote,

"must comprehend more than simple self-preservation; the security

of spiritual and cultural values, including national and

individual freedom, human rights and the history of our nation

and our civilization are included."119 The cold war, to phrase it

differently, was a total struggle waged simultaneously in all

dimensions of human conflict. This was a pregnant notion

implying that "national defense is not the exclusive property and

concern of men in uniform, but the responsibility as well of

labor, management, agriculture, industry and every group that

goes to make up the national complex."120 And, since the cold war

was an ideological struggle, American and Western strategy had to

be holistic, weaving together ideological, psychological,

political, and economic responses. To Forrestal, Eisenhower

wrote: "...it is almost impossible to deal with the security

problem without giving consideration to vital factors involving

the political, industrial, economic and even moral fibre of the

United States."121

While Eisenhower found this holistic view of strategy

necessary in the face of the Soviet threat, he also found it

troubling. The general was very much a product of American

strategic and military culture which stresses the divisions and

boundaries between the exercise of military power and other forms

of national strength. Holism in strategy ran counter to the
"purist" view of military-civil relations which sought to exclude

the military from nonmilitary strategic issues. Eisenhower, by

inclination, favored the purist approach. For example, when the

immensely popular general was asked to join the Foreign Policy

Association, a nonpartisan educational organization, he declined

and explained:

While of course the Army is an instrument of foreign

policy, it is merely an instrument. So while as a

citizen I applaud every effort to inform ourselves and

others of the essentials of international problems, as

military head of the Army, I feel it is my duty to

remain mute.122

MacArthur's experience as the occupation ruler of Japan

heightened Eisenhower's distrust of military impingement on what

he considered civilian prerogatives.123 Still, he gradually moved

toward a "fusionist" position that viewed military power as

inseparable from other forms of power and thus accorded military

leaders a major role in the shaping of grand strategy.

This was particularly clear in the economic realm. 

Throughout the early years of the cold war, Eisenhower was

developing the keen feel for the role of economics in grand

strategy which would be a trademark of his presidency. He was

especially aware of the relationship of economic health to

national morale which, in turn, undergirded all other elements of

national power. "European economic health and morale," he wrote,

"are both essential ingredients to the security of the region."124

Such thinking illustrated a sophisticated understanding of

American strategic culture and the strategic situation. Military

power, Eisenhower argued, "is largely negative in character. Its

purpose is to protect or defend, not to create and develop."125

Yet military force was "still too much respected" in the new

global security environment to be ignored.126 Eisenhower thus

subscribed to the traditional American notion that military power

should be accumulated only reluctantly, but when necessary,

should be gathered in impressive amounts.

Finally, as the basis for his approach to military strategy,

Eisenhower gave serious thought to the role of war and military

power in the new global security environment. He anticipated no

revolutionary change in the nature of warfare.127 It would remain

an unfortunate currency of international relations so long as

dictators existed. Drawing on what he saw as the lessons of

World War II, he considered unity of command, a strong peacetime

military, and cooperation with allies as the primary imperatives

for post-war military strategy.128

Eisenhower also concluded that the trend toward greater and

more all-encompassing scope in warfare would continue. "Should

the tragedy of another war occur," he wrote, "the sweep of combat

will be over broader and deeper areas. Thus the zone of battle,
in its three dimensions, will tend to expand, and every element

contributing directly to the conduct or support of military

operations will become a target for enemy action."129 But despite

this physical expansion of combat, the incendiary nature of the

global security environment meant that there would be a temporal

compression of war. It could, in other words, come with shocking

suddenness rather than as the conclusion of a prefatory crisis. 

Eisenhower argued:

Conditions today are sufficiently turbulent..that war

might be visited upon the world without the impetus of

planning or deliberate policy. One isolated action

might precipitate conflict and, once started in a

critical area, war leaps across new borders and quickly

involves other nations whose whole desire is for

peace.130

Because of the vital and destructive role of airpower in

future wars, enemy air forces and weapons of mass destruction

would be first priority military objectives. All friendly

resources--air, land, sea, and psychological--would be used to

attack these. Conventional forces would be "lighter, faster and

harder hitting," but these same qualities would increase

logistics requirements.131 Armor would form the centerpiece to

conventional operations, thus creating a need for decentralized

command to allow for initiative by individual divisions;

relatively light and easily maintained vehicles with heavy

firepower; and close cooperation with tactical air forces.132

Unlike World War II in Europe, the United States was likely

to be a target at the onset of the conflict.133 This meant that

the nation needed an adequate standing military force and

overseas bases. The new U.S. military strategy to use these

forces should, according to Eisenhower, be shaped by a set of

assumptions about future military conflict:134

• The next major war would require complete national

mobilization.

• The United States will be attacked without a declaration

of war by a prepared enemy using airpower, "new weapons," and

sabotage.

• The United States cannot depend on protection by Allies

during mobilization as in World War II.

• The British Empire would be at least a friendly neutral

during the war.

• The United States should seek to confine combat to

theaters outside North America.

• No nation or foreseeable coalition could successfully

invade the continental United States during the 1940s.
• The United States may be drawn into a war as a third party

at any time.

Despite the importance of airpower in future war,

Eisenhower--in a stance not particularly surprising for the Army

Chief of Staff--argued for the continuing relevance of ground

forces. To Joseph L. Collins he wrote:

There has been much talk of air and sea winning a war,

etc.--I honestly believe that, if we view the future

with naked eyes, and reject all wishful thinking, we

will find that the training, indoctrination,

conditioning, equipping, and readying of our ground

forces is possibly going to be an even more important

thing in any future war than in the past.135

Only ground forces, after all, could seize and hold bases

for retaliation and air defense. Still, Eisenhower realized that

the traditional autonomy of ground forces had passed. "The

ground soldier," he wrote, "is now only one member of the

team."136 "Separate ground, sea, and air warfare is gone forever.

 If ever again we should be involved in a war, we will fight it

in all elements, with all services, as one single concentrated

effort."137

The most important distinction between peacetime and wartime

strategy--and one which Eisenhower recognized--was the definition

of the primary objective. In peacetime, military power was used

to deter enemies rather than defeat them. Even given this

different objective, Eisenhower believed that the key themes of

warfighting strategy, especially efficiency and morale, also held

for deterrent strategy. These were the cornerstones of the

deterrent strategy he attempted to craft.

Eisenhower became Army Chief of Staff in late 1945. As with

his assignment to the War Department at the beginning of World

War II, he approached the new position warily. He wrote:

No personal enthusiasm marked my promotion to Chief of

Staff, the highest military post a professional soldier

in the United States Army can reach. When President

Truman broached the subject I told him that I'd much

rather retire but he said he had special need of me at

the moment.138

There were a number of reasons for this attitude. "The job

ahead," he wrote, "was not pleasant. The demobilization of a

wartime army is a dreary business... The high morale that

characterizes the healthy unit in campaigns deteriorates as the

time nears for its dispersal."139 Furthermore, the power of a

wartime commander grows slippery during the political battles

faced by a peacetime leader. As Louis Galambos wrote, the Chief

of Staff "confronted situations that were more complex and far
less malleable than his administrative environment had been

during the war and the occupation."140 This was all made even

more frustrating by the fact that Truman did not consult his

Chief of Staff to nearly the extent that Roosevelt did with

Marshall.141

Still, duty called, so Eisenhower set out to shape the

peacetime Army and peacetime military strategy as best he could.

 Three tasks in particular demanded most of his attention: 1)

defining the role of the Army and of ground forces in general in

the new national security and military strategy; 2) preserving

the effectiveness of the Army during extensive and rapid

demobilization; and 3) clarifying the role of nuclear weapons in

the new military strategy.

Eisenhower's thinking on the nature of future war provided a

conceptual foundation for the role of ground forces in the new

military strategy. As noted earlier, he considered ground forces

vital even in an era when the strategic projection of air and

naval power took on added importance. But there were a number of

obstacles to the development of effective U.S. ground forces.

Congress cut every budget submission presented by the Army before

the war in Korea.142 The technological element and speed of

modern warfare, in addition, placed great demands on individual

soldiers. Armies could not be raised overnight, but required

extensive training. Eisenhower thus supported the notion of

universal military training which received serious consideration

during the early years of the cold war.143 He wrote:

Developments of modern warfare tend to emphasize the

necessity for more and more technical knowledge for an

ever-increasing number of men. This requires intensive

and extensive training in the use of elaborate and

expensive equipment. In addition, we are seeking to

prepare armies as well as individuals. This

necessitates "team" training in maneuvers with adequate

time, machines, terrain, and personnel.144

In any conventional war, Eisenhower saw the short-term

military goals as defending the United States against direct

attack, striking an immediate retaliatory blow against enemy

bases and sources of power, and containing enemy main forces

while mobilizing.145 These objectives--in combination with the

strategic lessons of World War II--created a need for the "timely

mobilization of public opinion, trained men, proven weapons and

essential industries."146

As Army Chief of Staff, Eisenhower could support the

sustainment of the technological and industrial base, but only as

a secondary actor. Manpower was another matter. When support

for universal military training faltered, Eisenhower became a

strong advocate of a large and well-trained reserve. For Army

force structure, then, he argued:
[T]he professional Army must be a highly mobile

striking force, backed by organized civilian components

which can immediately assume the defensive positions

vacated by the Regular Army and reinforce the latter in

large-scale offensive operations.147

Eisenhower had only limited control over the pace or extent

of demobilization. At the conclusion of the war, the public

brought tremendous pressure on the Truman Administration to

complete this as rapidly as possible. What Eisenhower did have

to do was to preserve some modicum of order in the rush toward

demobilization and to attempt to retain an effective force.

In many ways the formation of national policy on the use of

nuclear weapons was the thorniest issue in American military

strategy during the first years of the cold war. Eisenhower

thought about this problem within the context of his view of

future war, but did not develop a clear notion of the precise

role of the atomic bomb. He was convinced that nuclear weapons

did not signal a true revolution in warfare.148 They did not make

conventional forces obsolete and, Eisenhower believed, they

should be incorporated into American military strategy.149 The

Chief of Staff did argue that the difficulty of defending against

nuclear attacks once they were launched make rapid and early

strikes against enemy bases the top priority at the inception of

war.150 He did not, however, consider that this could easily

imply that preemptive attacks, which were antithetical to the

American tradition in war, should become part of our strategy. 

It was only during Eisenhower's presidency that he wrestled with

this dilemma.

In general, Eisenhower cannot be faulted too much for his

failure to fully come to grips with the strategic implications of

the nuclear age. Since he was not a close confident of Truman,

he had little direct input into the formulation of the highest

levels of American strategy including its atomic element.151 And

furthermore, none of Eisenhower's contemporaries had a markedly

more sophisticated understanding of the impact of nuclear weapons

during the 1940s. Only by the end of the decade did the

country's best strategic minds began to explore the full

strategic implications of the nuclear age.152

Throughout his tenure as Chief of Staff, Eisenhower

persistently sought efficiency in the use of national resources

for security purposes. Frugality and concentration formed the

coda to all strategic decisions. In a memorandum to key staff

officers soon after becoming Chief, Eisenhower wrote:

The days of spending a hundred million dollars instead

of accepting any delay are gone. That was necessary in

war--now the watchword must be economy in men and

money. I should like to see us in all our activities

everywhere showing a concern for the tax payer's dollar

before we are hounded into it by Congressional
committees, by articles in the press, and so on.153

And to his close confident Bedell Smith, Eisenhower wrote:

"There is very obviously a definite limit to our resources. 

Concentration is indicated just as it is in war."154

Another way to maximize efficiency was through closer

cooperation among the military services--"jointness." "The

armed teamwork that achieved combat victory in World War II,"

Eisenhower wrote, "becomes more important as time passes. The

only way to assure its growth is through joint operational plans

made now and continually adjusted..."155 This demanded constant

attention. During the war, Eisenhower's position as Supreme

Commander gave him the power to forcibly insure interservice

cooperation when required. In peacetime, there was no equivalent

since the first few secretaries of Defense had neither the power

nor the inclination to rein in the service chiefs. Even the

decision to create a Chairman of the JCS in 1949 (after

Eisenhower's tenure as Army Chief of Staff) did not solve the

problem. And the shrinking military budgets of the 1940s

heightened service parochialism and turf battles.156

Eisenhower, as Army Chief of Staff, had no authority over

those who opposed greater jointness, especially the Navy.157 All

he could do was to use his powers of persuasion and personal

prestige to cajole opponents and encourage greater interservice

cooperation. He gave special focus to the relationship of land

and air forces. Eisenhower was an advocate of the creation of a

separate air force, but continued to support the development of

joint land/air doctrine and the evolution of techniques for close

air support.158

Eisenhower saw preservation of American industrial,

technological, and scientific advantages as another key to

efficiency, although again, his role in this arena was more that

of cheerleader than direct participant. He did move the Army

toward closer cooperation with the civilian industrial,

technological, and scientific sectors. In World War II,

according to Eisenhower,

the military effort required for victory threw upon the

Army an unprecedented range of responsibilities, many

of which were effectively discharged only through the

invaluable assistance supplied by our cumulative

resources in the natural and social sciences and the

talents and experience furnished by management and

labor. The armed forces could not have won the war

alone.159

Presumably this would also hold for future war, not only

during mobilization for a sustained conflict but also during the

initial stages when America's forces would need technological

superiority to offset numerical inferiority.
Along with efficiency, morale was the other enduring theme

of Eisenhower's time as Chief of Staff. But he did feel that

public motivation and morale were less his job than when, as

Supreme Commander, he held the attention of the world. This was

only realistic; public support for U.S. military strategy was

largely the purview of the Administration. But even though

public support was beyond his control, Eisenhower was sensitive

to the effect that it had on his ability to complete key tasks. 

 This was especially true of the timing of various functions. 

Given this, he felt that the restructuring of the Army and the

building of a new military strategy could be completed "before we

become paralyzed by that public apathy which seems inevitable in

times of relative peace."160 As during war, then, Eisenhower was

aware that public support for American strategy was both vital

and fickle, with changes coming in a tidal rather than linear

fashion.

There were other elements of morale over which the Chief of

Staff had more control. Eisenhower continued to believe that

American soldiers, whether regular Army or reserves, required

sustained and rational motivation to perform properly. It was

the job of top military leaders, especially the Chief of Staff,

to explain the stakes and rationale for the cold war and thus

provide motivation.161 His personal style was amenable to this

task.

In January 1951, Eisenhower began his assignment as SACEUR

with a tour of Europe. He used this to publicize some of his

central themes--in a Europe-wide radio broadcast, the new SACEUR

announced that he brought no troops with him, but did bring

hope.162 Despite this necessary public optimism, Eisenhower was

not enthusiastic about becoming military leader of the Alliance,

assuming that the job would be "confining, onerous and devoid of

the excitement that prevails in a command headquarters in time of

an emergency."163 But as with all of his time as a strategist,

duty prevailed.

It might have seemed that Eisenhower would welcome the

return to Europe, scene of his greatest glory. Any such feelings

were tarnished by the difficulty of the task he faced. He knew

that "peacetime coalitions throughout history have been weak and

notoriously inefficient."164 Given the leitmotif of his approach

to strategy--military efficiency maximized by minimum of

political constraints--a consummately political organization like

NATO would prove a challenge, perhaps an insurmountable one. 

Most frustrating of all was the fact that as the Alliance's

military leader, Eisenhower had only limited effect on the vital

political component. He wrote:

SHAPE is a military headquarters, but one whose

successful functioning is entirely dependent upon

political progress made within the North Atlantic

Treaty Organization. It stands or falls upon the

effectiveness of NATO leaders in uniting the people of
the free world in a clear understanding of the perils

facing us, and upon the degree of success achieved in

uniting the potential power of the various

participating countries. To produce such unity in NATO

seems to me to be our first and transcendent purpose--

so much that it requires the highest priority in the

thought and resources of every member nation.165

Despite the frustrations, Eisenhower understood the

importance of his position, especially his ability to use his

personal prestige to establish the psychological foundation of a

coherent alliance strategy. He immediately set out to sell NATO

in both the United States and Europe through an endless series of

press conferences, trips and meetings; to encourage Europeans to

make a greater effort for their own defense and augment

international cooperation; and to counter Americans who argued

that nuclear superiority obviated the need for enlarged

conventional forces.166 As he did this, the new Supreme Commander

continued to stress efficiency and morale.

In a general sense, there are at least four forms of

strategic efficiency. One is systemic. Much like the "total

quality management" which is popular among corporations and is

becoming increasingly so in the contemporary military, this

stresses streamlining, limiting redundancy, and synchronization

among the various components of large, complex organizations. 

The second is attitudinal, and causes frugality and cooperation

to become ingrained characteristics of the individuals who make

up a large, complex organization. The third is skill maximizing:

efficiency is heightened when the individuals who compose an

organization are talented and well-trained. The fourth form is

peculiar to strategy. Because strategy involves the imposition

of power and conflict between two (or more) thinking, scheming

antagonists, efficiency is increased by surprising, unsettling,

and confusing the enemy at key junctures. Thus initiative,

boldness, and creativity-- when properly used--heighten

efficiency.

As SACEUR, Eisenhower excelled in the first three forms of

efficiency, while falling short on the fourth. Although his

influence over the development of American military strategy was

less than when Army Chief of Staff, Eisenhower continued to

encourage "a common and joint approach to the problems that now

face us."167 Similarly, unity of command remained an intrinsic

element of his approach to strategy, especially in his role as

commander of U.S. forces--CINCEUCOM. For example, when asked for

comments on emergency war plan IRONBARK, Eisenhower wrote:

[I]t must be made absolutely clear that the directive

of the President placing all US forces in Europe under

my operational command for the accomplishment of my

mission, has no qualifications or limitations other

than the responsibility to ensure the evacuation of US

civilians in the event of an emergency.168
Finally, Eisenhower the deterrent strategist, like

Eisenhower the warfighting strategist, saw command organizations-

-systemic factors--as absolutely crucial to the coherence of his

command's strategy.169

In terms of actual programs, Eisenhower believed that

European cooperation leading toward military and political

integration was the cornerstone of NATO efficiency. "I am coming

to believe," he wrote in his diary, "that Europe's security

problem is never going to be solved satisfactorily until there

exists a U.S. of Europe. .."170 The American propensity to raise

integration and centralization to a philosophical tenet, as

reflected in the careers of John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and

many other cultural icons, found a welcome disciple in

Eisenhower. Whether unification of the American military

services or unification of Europe, he saw only benefits without

any apparent suspicion of those pathologies of overcentralization which would become evident to late-20th century

businesses and governments. To phrase it differently, Eisenhower

saw centralization at the strategic level as linear rather than

as a dyadic element that must be in harmony with

decentralization.

Attitudinal efficiency is closely linked with (and perhaps

indistinguishable from) morale. Maximum effort on the part of

individuals, after all, will only come when they believe strongly

in the cause they support, are confident that their exertions can

make a difference, have faith in their own abilities, and trust

their leaders and comrades. Morale augments all other human

capabilities and increases the ability of individuals to

withstand stress, fear, and anxiety. Given this, the

rejuvenation of morale was Eisenhower's second great theme as

SACEUR.

This was not easy. As Eisenhower wrote:

Apprehensions about a potential aggressive move against

the West provided the starting point for a common

alliance for survival. But we were not at war. The

absence of an imminent threat meant the absence of

strong motivation.171

Furthermore, at the end of the 1940s Western Europe still

suffered from a general, debilitating post-war malaise. 

Lingering war-weariness undercut attempts to resuscitate European

military strength. This passivity was heightened by the efforts

of pro-Soviet or Soviet-front political organizations and parties

throughout Western Europe, and, ironically, by the apparent

willingness of the United States to shoulder the burden of

Western economic reconstruction and defense.

Eisenhower thus saw his first enemy as Western lassitude

rather than the Red Army. He was convinced that American
assumption of the defense of Western Europe was unnatural and, in

the long term, unsustainable. This belief was based not only on

the traditional isolationist strain in American strategic

culture, but on what Eisenhower considered a general axiom of

international security. "It is clear," he wrote, "that no

principal portion of the world can be constantly defended by

forces furnished from another portion of the world."172 The key

was finding "how to inspire Europe to produce for itself those

armed forces that, in the long run, must provide the only means

by which Europe can be defended."173

The United States, according to Eisenhower, could do this in

three ways. The first was direct leadership within Western

Europe and NATO--creating "greater understanding, greater fervor,

greater faith."174 This was, in fact, the chief role of

Eisenhower himself given his notoriety and popularity. The

problem was that in deterrence, morale is dyadic and not linear.

 It was possible to dangerously over-enflame the public,

especially in the United States where traditional strategic

culture stressed the all-or-nothing nature of conflict. 

Eisenhower, with an increasingly sophisticated understanding of

strategy, was aware of this and knew that an overly-aroused and

active America could spawn further European passivity. For

Eisenhower, then:

[T]he question becomes as to how to fix or state our

assistance plan so that every person can struggle

toward a definite objective and yet not state the

problem in such terms as to ignore our basic purpose

which is to re-create the morale that will insure the

self-defense of Europe.175

This line of reasoning led to the second way that the United

States could inspire Europe: through our own unity and

steadfastness. "Our country is the keystone of the entire

structure," he wrote to Edward J. Bermingham, "and our unity

before the world must be unassailable."176 As SACEUR, Eisenhower

could encourage this type of American effort through his contacts

with the Congress, civic groups, and the press, but the burden

fell on the Truman Administration rather than military leaders.

The third way was through continued provision of physical

evidence of our support, including economic assistance, military

supplies, and troops. This was to be temporary in that the

United States would "provide the initial impetus to the program

through assistance in the equipping of forces, with maintenance,

replacement and other future outlays shouldered by the European

nations at the earliest practicable time."177 After that, the

United States would serve "as a storehouse of munitions and

equipment."178Again, the role of SACEUR in this type of effort was

constrained, and thus Eisenhower remained essentially a

cheerleader.
Mitigators.

By the end of his tenure as SACEUR, Eisenhower was satisfied

with his performance and felt that NATO was well on its way to

building credible deterrent force in both the military and

political sense. What pleased him most was that this had been

done without damage to the American economy or the economic

reconstruction of Europe.179 Although he never phrased it

precisely this way, Eisenhower was also happy with his

accomplishments in the face of an extensive range of mitigators

on strategic coherence.

For any military strategy aimed at deterrence, the most

powerful mitigator is the essential nature of deterrence itself.

 In deterrence, for example there are no clear indicators of

success. The deterrer, after all, can never know whether he

prevented aggression or whether the enemy never intended to

attack. Even more problematic, deterrence is imbued with

ambiguity. It occurs in a cold war setting, sometimes veering

toward outright war and sometimes toward peaceful competition,

but constantly hovering between the two. This means that the

role of military power is in flux and must always be understood

in relation to other elements of national power. Economic and

political factors, Eisenhower noted, "enter into everything we

do."180

Americans, with their peculiar strategic culture, have a

difficult time dealing with this kind of fluidity and ambiguity.

 We much prefer situations of unmitigated peace or unmitigated

war. Then we understand the rules. We know (or at least

believe) that in peace, the utility of military power is limited

and the influence of military officers should be constrained. 

There is no need for the mobilization of impassioned national

will which is, after all, a danger to individual freedom once

ignited. In war the shackles are off, military power is the

priority, national fervor is desirable, and military officers

become central players in the crafting of national strategy.

But despite the enduring appeal of such all-or-nothing type

of clarity, deterrence is invariably steeped in ambiguity.

Strategists--both civilian and military--must engineer

preparation without unnecessary intimidation, public support

without uncontrollable passion. Deterrence strategy, in other

words, is almost purely dyadic, and this is a realm where

Eisenhower in particular and Americans in general did not excel.

 Ambiguity thus forms a powerful mitigator on strategic

coherence.

As Army Chief of Staff and as SACEUR, Eisenhower also found

that his secondary, at times peripheral, role in the formulation

of strategy was also a mitigator. There were instances where he

had a clear notion of what needed to be done, but simply did not

have the authority or power to translate this into official
strategy, policy, or doctrine. Put plainly, Eisenhower as Chief

of Staff or SACEUR was much less influential than as Supreme

Commander in World War II. He thus had to rely greatly on his

civilian counterparts. As he wrote to Averell Harriman:

I can take up non-military things with friends in each

of the governments as I visit them, but this is not

good enough. We must have a dynamic and forceful

campaign of enlightenment of all NATO populations, and

this means that the inspiration must come largely from

civilian sources.181

The actual process of demobilization of the wartime military

and economy, driven as it was by war-weariness, also was a

mitigator on strategic coherence. The prime criterion for

demobilization was not the orderly transition from a wartime

economy and military force to a robust civilian one, but speed,

pure and simple. Again reflecting our traditional strategic

culture, Americans felt that sacrifice for national security was

something that occurred in wartime, not peacetime. Even when the

Truman Administration was able to mobilize public and

congressional support for the cold war by casting it as a new

variant of war, military leaders, including Eisenhower, still

felt that the resources they were given were inadequate for the

task at hand.

The coherence of Eisenhower's deterrent strategy also

suffered from a lack of role clarity. Both the Joint Chiefs of

Staff and SACEUR were new positions without a body of tradition

to establish the power, prerogatives, and constraints of their

occupants. This was particularly evident in NATO. Eisenhower

himself, while comfortable with the political and morale-building

nature of his job, was never fully clear as to the actual

military function of the SACEUR.

The Soviets themselves also served as a mitigator on the

coherence of Eisenhower's strategy. Whether deliberately or

inadvertently, they heightened the ambiguity of the cold war by

acting and configuring their own forces in a way that presented a

clear threat to trained strategists but not to publics and

political leaders less well-schooled in the eddies of conflict. 

Skillful strategy on the part of the enemy always erodes one's

own strategic coherence, and the Soviets, spawned in a system

fueled by subterfuge, fear, and intimidation, were naturally good

at cold war.

Finally, as a deterrent strategist, Eisenhower suffered from

a common but ironic mitigator on strategic coherence-- success. 

His natural tendency was to take what worked in World War II and

attempt to import it into his deterrent strategy. It took time

for him to adapt to the fundamental differences between

warfighting and deterrence. This tendency to "stick with what

works," however attuned to traditional American pragmatism, was

astrategic. Eisenhower never understood that the inherently
limited lifespan of strategic success means that what works today

may not--or probably won't--work tomorrow as the enemy reacts and

adapts.

Assessment.

Given the complex web of mitigators he faced, Eisenhower was

able to help craft a military strategy that was, in some ways,

remarkably coherent. Even though not a visionary in any sense,

he was forward-looking in his understanding of the need for a

holistic or total strategy, for global U.S. engagement and

leadership, for the indirect application of American military

power, and for closer cooperation among the military services.

On the other hand, Eisenhower failed to grasp key trends in

the evolution of warfare, especially at the poles of the spectrum

of conflict. He did not, for example, develop a comprehensive

understanding of the implications of nuclear weapons during his

tenure as Chief of Staff and SACEUR. Equally, he did not

understand what is now called low intensity conflict. Commenting

on the French war in Indochina, he did note that "no military

victory is possible in that kind of theater..."182 On the other

hand, he remained convinced that the war in Indochina and others

like it were strictly skirmishes in the "global conflict against

a Communist dictatorship."183

<T>Eisenhower developed at least a sound understanding of

the essence of a deterrence-based military strategy. For

example, even though he, like most Americans, did not fully grasp

the relationship of force and diplomacy, he did recognize the

secondary role of military power in American grand strategy. 

Even while Chief of Staff and SACEUR, Eisenhower stressed the

centrality of economics. This would later become a trademark of

his grand strategy as president. He also sensed the dyadic

nature of morale in deterrent strategy, and sought that difficult

balance between vigilance and passion. Finally, he saw that the

key role of American military power was indirect--to serve as

suppliers, movers, trainers, and, when absolutely necessary, a

global strategic reserve--and attempted to translate this into

strategy.

Deterrence always has three components: capability,

communication, and credibility. The deterrer must have the

physical ability to punish an aggressor or deny him victory; he

must make sure that potential aggressors understand this

capability; and he must assure that potential aggressors believe

that this capability will be used to counter aggression. Of the

three components, Eisenhower focused on capability. This is

logical. Capability is the groundwork of deterrence and, in the

post-World War II period, was the component most directly

challenged by political pressure for demobilization and

disengagement. Force development was thus a key element of

Eisenhower's strategic leadership. Furthermore, he did what he
could for credibility which, in part, arises from the readiness

of military forces. Eisenhower knew this, and stressed training

and other components of readiness.

In terms of a major shortcoming, Eisenhower as Chief of

Staff and SACEUR had only a vague sense of the actual means of

employing the forces he helped develop. And then, most of his

thinking was a rehash of World War II. This was most evident in

the vague notions developed for warfighting by NATO, but even the

Army he helped create reflected the realities of World War II

rather than the future.184 Hence the steadiness but lack of true

vision or creativity which characterized Eisenhower's approach to

warfighting strategy reemerged in his deterrent military

strategy. As in World War II, what a Leninist would call the

"global correlation of forces" was such that this did not lead to

disaster, but it also did not spawn the most coherent strategy

possible.
CHAPTER 4

CONCLUSIONS

Grand Strategy.

For Eisenhower, the transition from a warfighting to a

deterrent strategist was a major one. As a warfighting

strategist, he had the luxury of steady increases in the quantity

and quality of available resources, including both troops and

material. As a deterrent strategist, he faced declining

resources. Uncomfortable trade-offs were the order of the day

and defining the level of risk acceptable in an environment of

amorphous threat became a central planning procedure.185 In

addition, the fundamental nature of the risk changed from the

danger of faltering public or allied support which he faced

during World War II to the more ominous threat of outright

defeat. This meant that the dyadic dimension of strategy, the

balancing, harmonizing, and trade-offs, were more important to

Eisenhower-the-deterrer than to Eisenhower-the-warfighter.

The same held when Eisenhower served as engineer of our

grand strategy. He assumed the presidency convinced that major

alterations were needed in American national security policy.

Eisenhower was convinced that containment, as it developed under

Truman, was incoherent and immorally passive. According to the

General's calculations, the Truman strategy had allowed 100

million people a year to slip under Communist control.186 As a

student of strategy, Eisenhower believed in the value of the

initiative, and felt that Truman had surrendered it.

Even more importantly, Eisenhower was worried that Truman's

military buildup had made American grand strategy insolvent.

American prosperity and economic health, he believed, undergirded

all other elements of our strategy. The high taxes required by

the Truman strategy endangered this and could erode public

support for the strategy. According to a basic statement of U.S.

national security strategy prepared by the National Security

Council, "Continuation of this course of action over a long

period of time would place the United States in danger of

seriously weakening its economy and destroying the values and

institutions which it is seeking to maintain."187

Eisenhower's response was to shape an altered American grand

strategy--the "New Look"--which sought to integrate political,

psychological, economic, and military components in a coherent

but frugal way. Continuity was the byword. The New Look was

imbued with themes, ideas, features and characteristics developed

when Eisenhower dealt exclusively with military strategy, but

attempted to translate these into the more complex arena of grand

strategy.

The military dimension of the New Look stressed strategic
nuclear weapons.188 Reliance on conventional military force for

deterrence was extravagant in its use of valuable resources. 

And, should the military actually be used, it was potentially

expensive in human terms. But this problem could be overcome. 

The American advantage in numbers of nuclear bombs and in

delivery systems could be used to minimize the need to match

Soviet conventional forces. In the words of John Foster Dulles,

Eisenhower's Secretary of State, the way to attain "a maximum

deterrent at a bearable cost" was to reinforce local conventional

defenses with "massive retaliatory power."189 Hence massive

retaliation became a cornerstone of the Eisenhower military

strategy.

Massive retaliation required serious consideration of the

<%-2>utility of nuclear weapons. While Truman must have given

sober thought to the conditions for the use of nuclear weapons--

<%0>particularly in response to non-nuclear aggression--he never

spelled out these conditions. Eisenhower and Dulles often

implied that a nuclear response to certain types of non-nuclear

aggression was likely. Despite concern for nuclear disarmament

later in the Administration, the early Eisenhower strategy

reflected John Foster Dulles' view "that somehow or other we must

manage to remove the taboo from the use of these weapons."190 And

this was not a bluff. Basic strategy documents show that

Eisenhower was clearly willing to consider the first use of

nuclear weapons as a means of ameliorating strategic risk at a

low economic cost. In his memoirs, Eisenhower wrote "My

intention was firm: to launch the Strategic Air Command

immediately upon trustworthy evidence of a general attack against

the West."191

Once the Administration decided to rely on nuclear weapons,

it set out to garner support for this move and to implement it. 

Within the defense establishment, emphasis on tactical nuclear

weapons paved the way for Army support of cuts in conventional

forces.192 Dulles and other officials, including Eisenhower, made

many attempts to explain massive retaliation to the American

public. Eisenhower's aides convinced NATO of the credibility and

efficacy of what came to be called "extended deterrence."193 And

the Administration instigated a number of programs to upgrade

U.S. nuclear forces. The Minuteman, Polaris, B-47, B-52, and

B-58 were all children of the New Look.194 As an adjunct, civil

and continental defense programs received increased resources.195

Eisenhower accorded conventional military forces a

relatively minor role in the cold war. He believed that any war

between the superpowers would inevitably involve the early use of

nuclear weapons. Should the conflict persist, conventional

armies could be mobilized.196 In smaller wars, allies would

provide most of the land forces. "Our allies along the periphery

of the Iron Curtain," Eisenhower wrote, should "provide (with our

help) for their own local security, especially ground forces,

while the United States, centrally located and strong in

productive power, provided mobile reserve forces of all arms,
with emphasis on sea and air contingents."197

As NATO's first commander, Eisenhower had recognized that

reliance on American power for protection of Europe could lead

our allies to minimize their own defense efforts and thus erode

American support for the strategy. As president he continued to

support the European Defense Community and increased defense

spending by the NATO allies.198 This, however, was to little

avail, and throughout the life of the New Look, the United States

bore a disproportionate share of the burden for European

security.

The Eisenhower Administration did not stop at this blend of

extended deterrence, alliances, and mobile reserves. The

President and his top advisers realized that traditional American

attitudes toward military force, which, as Robert Osgood argued,

disassociated power and policy, did not fully fit in a cold war

setting.199 To Administration strategists, paramilitary covert

action appeared to offer a partial curative. Eisenhower

inherited the basic institutional structure for covert action. 

During the initial stages of the New Look, however, the poor

prospects for covert activity in the Soviet Bloc led to

skepticism about the value of this tool.200 But as European

influence in the Third World waned, covert action took on greater

importance, and the Administration set out to develop the

capacity and willingness to use it.201 The Eisenhower

Administration thus represented "the heyday of American covert

action."202

New Look economics were primarily designed to encourage

American prosperity. This was not only desirable in itself, but

also a central component of national security.203 According to

one of the earliest Eisenhower Administration studies of American

strategy, "A vital factor in the long-term survival of the free

world is the maintenance by the United States of a sound, strong

economy."204 In part, this reflected the old "arsenal of

democracy" thinking. A healthy U.S. economy was necessary to

undergird military power. Stockpiling of strategic materials

formed part of the solution, and Eisenhower saw this as vital for

the New Look.205 Industrial mobilization was even more important.

 In response to serious problems encountered at the beginning of

the Korean War, Defense Mobilization Order VII-7 (August 25,

1954) made the Department of Defense responsible for maintaining

facilities, machine tools, production equipment, and skilled

workers for wartime needs.206 But within a few years, Eisenhower

Administration strategists became convinced that the New Look

made even a Korea-type conventional conflict unlikely. Led by

the Air Force, the Administration began to assume that any war

would be a total nuclear conflict fought with weapons on hand at

the start, and thus attention to mobilization declined.207

American economic power was also to undergird self-defense

by allied nations. As an Eisenhower Administration document

asking Congress for continued support of the Mutual Security
Program noted, "Enduring military strength cannot be built on a

shaky economic foundation. Nor can freedom itself live for long

in an atmosphere of social stagnation and marginal living

standards."208 The Marshall Plan applied such logic to Western

Europe, but Eisenhower was keenly aware that the same truth held

for the emerging Third World. There, especially economic

development, stoked by American assistance, was as much an

implement of containment as a means to assure access to raw

materials.209

In an even broader sense, American prosperity was to

circumvent the economic stagnation that opened the door for

Communist subversion. Since democracy depended directly on

economic health, the arsenal of democracy would provide not only

the tools of war, but also the means for creating a foundation

for political stability which, in turn, would limit Soviet

influence. "Squalor and starvation," Eisenhower explained,

"worked to the advantage of Communist ambitions."210 Security and

economic assistance from the United States was based on a type of

triage. The United States would directly help the weakest and

most geostrategically important nations. Our European allies

would then assume responsibility for areas where the United

States was not active.211 This was especially true for Africa

where the New Look assumed that even following decolonization,

the former European colonial powers would retain responsibility

for economic development.212 The United States, correspondingly,

would play an increasing role in the Far and Middle East.213

Beyond the tangible advantages of American economic

strength, prosperity was also a powerful psychological weapon. 

For the American people, economic growth would mitigate the costs

of the cold war and bolster public support. Internationally,

American prosperity would serve as a beacon for those torn

between free enterprise and the allures of communism.214

According to an NSC study, "The ability of the free world, over

the long pull, to meet the challenge and competition of the

Communist world will depend in large measure on the capacity to

demonstrate progress toward meeting the basic needs and

aspirations of its peoples."215

Initially the Administration thought that implementing the

economic component of the New Look would be easy. Military

strategy required active measures against a malevolent foe and

error could spawn holocaust. Prosperity, on the other hand,

required only a balanced budget, lower taxes, and limited

inflation.216 The productive genius of the American people would

do the rest.217 It did not take long, however, for Eisenhower to

realize that vested economic interests were nearly as implacable

foes as the Soviets, especially the "military-industrial

complex."218

Politically, the New Look placed great value on the

maintenance of alliances. Given the inherent weaknesses of the

Soviet Union, it was forced to purse a divide-and-conquer
strategy. This meant that "no nation outside the Iron Curtain

can afford to be indifferent to the fate of any other nation

devoted to freedom."219 It was thus vital to convince allies (and

potential allies) of the U.S. commitment to their defense and

advancement.220 To do this, the New Look sought to develop

political unity, strength and determination in the free world by

a range of political and psychological measures; extend good

offices to resolve free world controversies (including

decolonization); and, encourage the formation of further

mechanisms for collective security and mutual defense.221

The political component of the New Look also called for

continued American support for international organizations. 

Eisenhower advocated collective security through international

organizations well before his presidency. In fact, his

enthusiasm for the United Nations was somewhat at odds with his

conservative peers.222 Despite the deadlock of the Security

Council engendered by the cold war, Eisenhower stated that the

United Nations "still represents man's best organized hope to

substitute the conference table for the battlefield."223 Even

well into his first administration, Eisenhower lauded the U.N.

and argued that it was entering its second decade "with a wider

membership and ever-increasing influence and usefulness."224

Faced with the cold war stalemate in the U.N. Security Council,

the Eisenhower Administration also supported collective security

by regional international organizations.225

The final component of the New Look was psychological. 

Eisenhower saw the cold war as "an attack on the minds of men"

with world opinion the battlefield.226 Perceptions, attitudes,

and beliefs were crucial weapons. Eisenhower understood the

essential psychological structure of the cold war (at least as

relates to Europe and North America) much better than Truman. 

The old soldier recognized that even the best trained and

equipped troops were useless without good morale, and set out to

integrate this simple truth into American grand strategy.

The Truman Administration created the institutional

structure for psychological warfare.227 Still, the Eisenhower

Administration felt that the Truman efforts, which dealt mostly

with psychological operations during general war, were not

far-ranging or holistic enough.228 Eisenhower thus directed

organizational streamlining and policy changes to broaden the

span of U.S. psychological warfare. The actual content of the New

Look's psychological strategy was built on the intrinsic appeal

of the American system. If the differences in the American and

Soviet systems are publicized, Eisenhower believed, our system

will prevail.229

Liberation was the key theme of the psychological strategy.

 As the New Look initially took shape, this meant liberation of

Soviet satellites. Moscow's divide-and-conquer techniques were

to be turned around; American strategy would "place the maximum

strain on Soviet-satellite relations and try to weaken Soviet
control over the satellite countries."230 But however much

Eisenhower understood the perceptual contours of the cold war, he

overlooked one of the most basic elements of psychological

warfare: threats unsupported by tangible power have a limited

lifespan and utility. Thus while Eisenhower promised "to render

unreliable in the mind of the Kremlin rulers the hundreds of

millions enslaved in the occupied and satellite nations,"231 he

was not willing to back it with military force. Failure to aid

the Hungarian uprising of 1956 proved this and eroded any

remaining psychological value of liberation in the Soviet bloc.232

 Support for liberation in the Third World proved equally

shallow. Privately, at least, Eisenhower prodded the European

powers on the pace of decolonization.233 Publicly this was

counterbalanced by warnings from the State Department that

"premature independence can be dangerous, retrogressive and

destructive."234

The domestic component of the psychological strategy was

even more central. Eisenhower fully grasped the transitory

nature of American support for the costs of global

responsibility. Fear of isolationism played a large part in

convincing Eisenhower to seek the presidency in 1952, and he

believed that it still lurked just below apparent public support

for the cold war. Thus the New Look called for explicit steps to

preserve support for American strategy, and Eisenhower himself

pursued this tirelessly.235

In the end, the New Look exhibited both the strengths and

weaknesses of the approach to strategy Eisenhower had honed as

Supreme Commander, Chief of Staff, and SACEUR. He recognized

that in an environment of constrained resources and amorphous

threat, the linear component of strategy was secondary. The

threshold where the cost of more resources seemed to outweigh the

benefits was simply lower than in wartime. Thus the focus was on

the dyadic.

Here Eisenhower continued his stress on the managerial

rather than the entrepreneurial. Despite some dynamic early

rhetoric, there was almost nothing that was creative or bold in

his grand strategy. It was steady, cautious, and persistent. 

Given all this, a final assessment of the strategic coherence of

the New Look is necessarily mixed. It was not markedly worse

than the strategies which preceded and followed it, but then

again, it was not fundamentally different.

Assessment.

In many ways, Dwight Eisenhower was the archetypical

American military strategist. Though unusual in the extent and

length of his influence, the enduring characteristics of his

approach to strategy were those of several generations of

American strategists. Put differently, he was unique only in the

level of his accomplishments. This is part of his allure. We
may study more atypical commanders such as MacArthur and Patton

and draw lessons from them, but it is Eisenhower who best shows

us the ultimate strengths and shortcomings of American military

strategy.

Despite fits of self-criticism, there are many strengths in

the American approach to military strategy. These include

steadiness, a genuine sense of care for troops, careful attention

to the linear component of strategy, sensitivity to public

perceptions of military operations, and a functional attitude

toward military/civil relations that defers to civilian leaders

but prefers to not let political concerns dominate military

decisions. Resistance to the full blending of the military and

the political is consummately American. After all, one of the

reasons that Clausewitz is given so much attention in American

military education is because his dictums concerning the

relationship of policy and war are not intuitively obvious to

officers reared in our peculiar strategic culture.

Eisenhower's military strategy also exhibited the enduring

weaknesses of the American approach to strategy. He was

inconsistent at harmonizing the dyadic elements of strategy and

almost always stressed the tangible results of the application of

military power over the psychological. The greater the ambiguity

of the context in which military power was applied, the more

serious these weaknesses. They did not drastically inhibit

Eisenhower's warfighting strategy, but placed limitations on his

approach to deterrence. Without a temporary monopoly of nuclear

weapons and superiority in methods for their delivery, these

weaknesses could have proven deadly. We were, in a very real

sense, lucky. Eisenhower was a skilled practitioner of precisely

those things which worked in the security environment of the

1940s and early 1950s.

What lessons, then, can we draw from Eisenhower's career as

a military strategist? There are many, but a few are most stark.

First, Eisenhower showed the vital nature of symbiotic

relationships among strategists. He recognized his shortcomings

and developed functional ties with counterparts strong in talents

where he was weak--Bedell Smith, Patton, Marshall, etc.

Ironically, this penchant for developing symbiotic relationships

showed strength in an often-overlooked dimension of the dyadic

realm. Put simply, great leaders regulate their egos with a

sense of their weaknesses. No one reaches the pinnacle of power

without a robust ego which gives them the confidence to lead and

to create the command presence which causes others to follow. 

But nearly all leaders who sustain their greatness over time also

have an accurate notion of their own shortcomings. Leaders such

as Napoleon and Hitler did not have this, and ultimately they

failed. Eisenhower recognized his faults and thus took steps to

transcend them. This is a process which all truly great

strategists must follow.
Second, Eisenhower's career as a military strategist

illustrated the difficulty and the importance of careful

attention to the dyadic realm of strategy. It is natural for

humans to prefer one pole of strategic dyads over the other, to

be either hard or soft, entrepreneurial or managerial. 

Successful strategists sublimate or transcend these natural

feelings and develop instead a sense of harmony and balance. To

slip into cliche, "all things in their place." A great

strategist thus has a penchant for occasionally taking actions

which make him uncomfortable or even afraid.

Third, Eisenhower's career illustrated that there were times

when the need for creativity, for ignoring proven principles and

patterns, can be decisive. In war, such instances often occur

when the enemy develops expectations and builds his strategy on

them, or when the enemy faces some sort of trauma such as the

collapse of German defenses in France in September 1944. In

peacetime, bursts of strategic creativity are decisive during

times of deep change or transition in the global security context

like the beginning of the cold war, or when strategy formulation

and strategy itself becomes overly-bureaucratized and

stultifying. The tendency in a realm as complex as strategy is

to persist in patterns and techniques until they are proven

ineffective. The astute strategist senses such obsolescence

before it is proven, and uses a burst of creativity to establish

new patterns, expectations, and procedures. Eisenhower did not

do this, but tended to stick with a technique or method until it

failed.

Finally, Eisenhower's career illustrated the need for

psychological acumen in strategy. Eisenhower, of course, was an

astute psychologist when it came to understanding and motivating

colleagues, superiors, staff, and troops. Where he failed was in

understanding the enemy or opponent. It is not an overstatement

to say that he was too American, and thus unable to overcome our

natural insularity. Psychological acumen in strategy is not an

absolute necessity for an antagonist with an overwhelming

advantage in the material realm, but is for an antagonist facing

parity or a disadvantage.

In general, Eisenhower, as a military strategist, is a model

for emulation when a high cost but low risk strategy is necessary

or desirable. He provided tremendous examples of the advantages

of the sort of positive interpersonal style so valuable in

coalition warfare. But is a high cost/low risk military strategy

the way of the future for the United States? In the short term,

yes. We will clearly remain militarily preponderant for some

years. As Desert Storm showed, we have mastered the sort of

linear/tangible military strategy that Eisenhower preferred.

In the long term, however, the global security environment

will change in fundamental ways. Preponderance is always

temporary, and as the quantity of American military power

declines (even assuming the quality stays level) and as other
nations increase their military power (which they inevitably

will), we will need more efficient military strategies. This

will demand greater attention to creativity, increased

psychological acumen, and harmony in the dyadic component. 

Hopefully, students of military strategy can learn both the

positive and negative lessons of Eisenhower's career and use both

to develop these sorely needed skills.
ENDNOTES

1. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, Garden City,

NY: Doubleday, 1948, p. 14.

2. E.K.G. Sixsmith, Eisenhower as Military Commander, New

York: Stein and Day, 1972, p. 13.

3. Dwight D. Eisenhower, At Ease: Stories I Tell to

Friends, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967, p. 249.

4. Diary entry of January 4, 1942, reprinted in The

Eisenhower Diaries, ed. by Robert H. Ferrell, New York: W.W.

Norton, 1981, p. 40.

5. David Chandler, Marlborough as Military Commander, New

York: Charles Scribner, 1973, p. 313.

6. Kenneth S. Davis, Soldier of Democracy: A Biography of

Dwight Eisenhower, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952, p. 263.

7. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 19.

8. According to Stephen E. Ambrose, "C&GS was not trying to

turn out Napoleons, but rather competent staff officers..." 

(Eisenhower, Volume I: Soldier, General of the Army,

President-Elect, 1890-1952, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983,

p. 79.) For detail on the Leavenworth curriculum and

Eisenhower's year there, see Mark C. Bender, Watershed at

Leavenworth: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Command and General

Staff School, Fort Leavenworth: U.S. Army Command and General

Staff College Combat Studies Institute, 1990.

9. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume I, p. 76.

10. Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and

Peace, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1987.

11. For details, see Steven Metz, "Why Aren't Americans

Better at Strategy?", Military Review, Vol. 69, May 1989, pp.

9-15.

12. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Oxford:

Clarendon, 1975, pp. 91-92.

13. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1976, p. 190.

14. Ibid., p. 77.

15. Martin van Crevald, The Transformation of War, New

York: Free Press, 1991, p. 109.

16. See Frederick M. Downey and Steven Metz, "The American
Political Culture and Strategic Planning," Parameters, Vol. 18,

September 1988, pp. 34-42; and Yitzhak Klein, "A Theory of

Strategic Culture," Comparative Strategy, Vol. 10, January-March

1991, pp. 3-23.

17. J.F.C. Fuller, The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant,

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958, p. 4.

18. Cole C. Kingseed, "Eisenhower's Prewar Anonymity: Myth

or Reality?", Parameters, Vol. 21, Autumn 1991, pp. 87-98.

19. Louis Merton, "Germany First: The Basic Concept of

Allies Strategy in World War II," in Command Decisions, ed. by

Kent Roberts Greenfield, Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of

Military History, United States Army, 1960, p. 42.

20. Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance, Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 1950, pp. 646-659.

21. Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History

of United States Military Strategy and Policy, Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1973, pp. 327-328.

22. Kent Roberts Greenfield, American Strategy in World War

II: A Reconsideration, Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1979, p. 30.

23. Richard M. Leighton, "OVERLORD Versus the Mediterranean

at the Cairo-Teheran Conferences," in Command Decisions, p. 255.

24. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Report by the Supreme Commander

to the Combined Chiefs of Staff on the Operations in Europe of

the Allied Expeditionary Force, 6 June 1944 to 8 May 1945, (henceforth Eisenhower, Report), Washington, DC: Government

Printing Office, 1946, p. viii. The Germans did not make a stand

along the Seine or Somme.

25. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 226.

26. Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's Six Great Decisions, New York: Longmans, Green, 1956, p. 211.

27. Dwight D. Eisenhower, memorandum to George Marshall,

February 1942, reprinted in The Papers of Dwight David

Eisenhower, Volume I: The War Years, (henceforth, Papers, Vol.

I), ed. by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1970, pp. 145-148.

28. David Irving, The War Between the Generals, New York:

Congdon and Lattes, 1981, p. 10.

29. Eisenhower, Report, p. viii.

30. Stephen E. Ambrose, "Eisenhower's Generalship,"

Parameters, Vol. 20, June 1990, p. 6.
31. Martin Van Creveld, Command in War, Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 1985, p. 64.

32. Eisenhower, memorandum to George Marshall, March 25,

1942, reprinted in Papers, Vol. I, p. 205.

33. See, for example, Eisenhower, memorandum to George

Marshall, July 23, 1942, reprinted in Papers, Vol. I, pp.

407-413.

34. Eisenhower, note of January 22, 1942, reprinted in

Papers, Vol. I, p. 66.

35. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume I, p. 147.

36. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 225.

37. Forrest C. Pogue, The Supreme Command: The United

States Army in World War II: The European Theater of Operations, Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History,

Department of the Army, 1954, p. 249.

38. David Eisenhower, Eisenhower At War 1943-1945, New

York: Random House, 1986, p. 88.

39. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, pp. 280-284.

40. Alfred D. Chandler Jr., Introduction to Papers, Vol. I, p. xxxii.

41. Stephen E. Ambrose, The Supreme Commander: The War

Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Garden City, NY:

Doubleday, 1970, p. 33.

42. Eisenhower, memorandum to George Marshall, February

1942, reprinted in Papers, Vol. I, pp. 145-148. For analysis,

see Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell, Strategic Planning for

Coalition Warfare 1941-1942, Washington, DC: Office of the Chief

of Military History, Department of the Army, 1953, p. 157.

43. Eisenhower, memorandum to George Marshall, February 28,

1942, reprinted in Papers, Vol. I, p. 151.

44. Eisenhower, memorandum to General Marshall and Admiral

King, July 19, 1942, reprinted in Papers, Vol. I, p. 393.

45. Eisenhower, memorandum to George Marshall, February 28,

1942, reprinted in Papers, Vol. I, p. 149. Emphasis in original.

46. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume I, pp. 133-135.

47. Eisenhower, memorandum to Marshall and King, July 19,

1942, reprinted in Papers, Vol. I, p. 393.
48. Eisenhower, memorandum for the record, July 26, 1942,

reprinted in Papers, Vol. I, p. 447.

49. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 18.

50. Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army,

New York: Macmillan, 1967, p. 455.

51. David Eisenhower, Eisenhower At War, p. 79.

52. Chandler, Introduction to Papers, Vol. I, p. xxviii.

53. Kenneth S. Davis, Soldier of Democracy: A Biography of

Dwight Eisenhower, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952, p. 472.

54. E.K.G. Sixsmith, Eisenhower as Military Commander, New

York: Scarborough 1983, p. 39.

55. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 30.

56. Pogue, The Supreme Command, p. 41.

57. Chandler, Introduction to Papers, Vol. I, p. xxi.

58. Ambrose, The Supreme Commander, p. 25. For an example,

see Eisenhower memorandum to George Marshall, May 11, 1942, on

the commander for Operation BOLERO, reprinted in Papers, Vol. I, p. 292.

59. See Warren F. Kimball, ed., Churchill and Roosevelt:

The Complete Correspondence, 3 vols., Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1984.

60. Ambrose, The Supreme Commander, p. 22.

61. Eisenhower, memorandum to LTG Lloyd Ralston Fredenall,

February 4, 1943, reprinted in Papers, Vol. I, p. 940.

62. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume I, p. 122.

63. Pogue, The Supreme Command, p. 34.

64. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume I, pp. 271-272.

65. Weigley, The American Way of War, p. 320.

66. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 210.

67. Harry C. Butcher, My Three Years with Eisenhower, New

York: Simon and Schuster, 1946, p. 6.

68. Ambrose, The Supreme Commander, p. 55.
69. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, pp. 74-75.

70. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume I, p. 172.

71. Eisenhower, letter to Edgar Newton Eisenhower,

September 26, 1944, reprinted in The Papers of Dwight David

Eisenhower, Volume IV: The War Years, (henceforth, Papers, Vol.

IV), ed. by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1970, p. 2193.

72. Clausewitz, On War, p. 190.

73. The effect of impatience on American strategy is

explored in Frederick M. Downey and Steven Metz, "The American

Political Culture and Strategic Planning, Parameters, Vol. 18,

September 1988, pp. 35-36.

74. Ambrose, "Eisenhower's Generalship," p. 12.

75. Ibid., p. 3.

76. Sixsmith, Eisenhower as Military Commander, p. 220.

77. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 24.

78. Eisenhower, memorandum to Robert P. Patterson, December

18, 1945, reprinted in The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower,

Volume VII: The Chief of Staff, (henceforth, Papers, Vol. VII),

ed. by Louis Galambos, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

1978, pp. 653-654.

79. Ibid., p. 654.

80. David Irving, The War Between the Generals, New York:

Congdon and Lattes, 1981, p. 38.

81. <~>Ambrose, The Supreme Commander, p. 528; Ambrose,

"Eisenhower as Commander," p. 40.

82. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 181.

83. Ambrose, "Eisenhower as Commander," p. 39.

84. For example, Hanson W. Baldwin, Great Mistakes of the

War, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1950; and Winston S.

Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1953.

85. Eisenhower, cable to George Marshall, April 7, 1945,

reprinted in Papers, Volume IV, p. 2592; Eisenhower, Crusade in

Europe, pp. 280-284.

86. Greenfield, American Strategy in World War II, p. 18. 

See also Herbert Feis, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957.
87. Winston S. Churchill, The Grand Alliance, Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 1950, p. 687.

88. Maurice Matloff, Strategic Planning for Coalition

Warfare, Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History,

U.S. Army, 1959, p. 11.

89. Weigley, The American Way of War, p. 313.

90. FMFM (Fleet Marine Force Manual) 1, Warfighting,

Washington, DC: Department of the Navy, Headquarters United

States Marine Corps, March 6, 1989, p. 28.

91. J.M.A. Gwyer, Grand Strategy, Volume III: June

1941-August 1942, London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office, 1964,

p. 350.

92. On this distinction, see Michael I. Handel, Sun Tzu and

Clausewitz Compared, Professional Readings in Military Strategy,

No. 2, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S.

Army War College, 1991, pp. 39-46.

93. Michael Howard, Grand Strategy, Volume IV: August

1942-September 1943, London: Her Majesty's Stationary Office,

1972, p. 198.

94. See B.H. Liddell Hart, The British Way in Warfare, London: Faber and Faber, 1932.

95. Richard E. Simpkin, Race to the Swift: Thoughts on

Twenty-Fist Century Warfare, London: Brassey's, 1985, p. 22.

96. Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, Volume II, New

York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923, p. 5.

97. B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2d revised edition, New

York: Signet, 1974, p. xx.

98. Chandler, Introduction to Papers, Vol. I, pp. xxiii,

xxvii.

99. John E. Fall, "Plan for OVERLORD," in U.S. Office of

Air Force History, The Army Air Forces in World War II, Volume 3,

Europe: ARGUMENT to V-E Day, January 1944 to May 1945, Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1951, p. 73.

100. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe, p. 221.

101. Chandler, Introduction to Papers, Vol. I, p. xxvi.

102. In FM 100-5, Operations, for example, the imperative

expression of unity of command is, "For every objective, ensure

unity of effort under one responsible commander." [p. 175].
103. Eisenhower, letter to Walter Bedell Smith, March 18,

1947, reprinted in The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume

VIII: The Chief of Staff, (henceforth, Papers, Vol. VIII), ed. by

Louis Galambos, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978,

pp. 1609-1610.

104. Eisenhower, memorandum to James Forrestal upon

termination of active military service, February 7, 1948,

reprinted in Papers, Vol. VIII, p. 2250.

105. The literature on the origin and develop of

containment is immense. John Lewis Gaddis provides some of the

best analysis. See John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the

Origin of the Cold War, 1941-1947, New York: Columbia University

Press, 1972; id., Strategies of Containment, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1982; and Terry L. Deibel and John Lewis

Gaddis, eds., Containment: Concept and Policy, 2 vols.,

Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1986.

106. Eisenhower, letter to Henry Maitland Wilson, October

30, 1947, reprinted in The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower,

Volume IX: The Chief of Staff, (henceforth, Papers, Vol. IX), ed.

by Louis Galambos, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

1978, p. 2022.

107. Eisenhower, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, p.

319.

108. Louis Galambos, introduction to Papers, Vol. VII, p.

xvii.

109. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume I, p. 452.

110. Eisenhower, letter to Private Gabriel N. Stilian,

August 23, 1951, reprinted in The Papers of Dwight David

Eisenhower, Volume XII: NATO and the Campaign of 1952, (henceforth, Papers, Vol. XII), ed. by Louis Galambos, Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, p. 489.

111. Ibid., pp. 488-489.

112. Eisenhower, letter to Edward John Bermingham, February

8, 1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 38.

113. Eisenhower, letter to Edward Hazlett, Jr., June 21,

1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 369.

114. Eisenhower, letter to Averell Harriman, April 20,

1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 224.

115. Eisenhower, letter to Congressman Richard B.

Wigglesworth (R-MA), July 6, 1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 398.
116. Eisenhower, letter to Hazlett, June 21, 1951, p. 369.

117. Ibid., p. 369.

118. Eisenhower, letter to Averell Harriman, April 2, 1951,

reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 181.

119. Eisenhower, letter to Stilian, August 23, 1951, p.

488.

120. Eisenhower, Final Report of the Chief of Staff United

States Army to the Secretary of the Army, February 7, 1948,

Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1948, p. 2.

121. Eisenhower, memorandum to Forrestal, February 7, 1948,

p. 2243.

122. Eisenhower, letter to Raymond Swing, February 21,

1947, reprinted in Papers, Vol. VIII, p. 1535.

123. Eisenhower, diary entry of April 9, 1951, reprinted in

Papers, Vol. XII, p. 185.

124. Eisenhower, letter to Averell Harriman, June 30, 1951,

reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 398.

125. Eisenhower, letter to Edward John Bermingham, April

20, 1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 232.

126. Eisenhower, Unity of Purpose Urged for Security of

North Atlantic Area: A Report to Members of the Congress,

February 1, 1951, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, 1951,

pp. 3-4.

127. Eisenhower, memorandum to the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

January 13, 1947, reprinted in Papers, Vol. VIII, p. 1441.

128. Galambos, introduction to Papers, Vol. VII, p. xiv.

129. Eisenhower, Annual Report to the Standing Group, North

Atlantic Treaty Organization, Paris: SHAPE, April 2, 1952, p. 35.

130. Eisenhower, Final Report of the Chief of Staff, pp.

6-7.

131. Eisenhower, Annual Report to the Standing Group, p.

34.

132. Eisenhower, letter to General Alfred Gruenther,

September 26, 1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 560.

133. Eisenhower, testimony in U.S. House of

Representatives, Military Establishment Appropriation Bill for
1948: Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on

Appropriations, 80th Cong., 1st sess., February 19, 1947, p. 77.

134. Eisenhower, top secret memorandum to the Joint Chiefs

of Staff, February 11, 1946, reprinted in Papers, Vol. VII, pp.

848-849.

135. Eisenhower, letter to Joseph Lawton Collins, February

28, 1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 81.

136. Eisenhower, Final Report of the Chief of Staff, p. 13.

137. Eisenhower, quoted in AFSC (Armed Forces Staff

College) Pub 1, The Joint Staff Officer's Guide 1991, Washington,

DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991, p. iv.

138. Eisenhower, At Ease, p. 316.

139. Ibid.

140. Galambos, introduction to Papers, Vol. VII, p. xv.

141. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume I, p. 443.

142. Eisenhower, At Ease, p. 319.

143. See Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States

Army, New York: Macmillan, 1967, pp. 496-500.

144. Eisenhower, letter to Bernard Baruch, January 5, 1946,

reprinted in Papers, Vol. VII, p. 736.

145. Eisenhower, Final Report, p. 9.

146. Ibid., p. 2.

147. Eisenhower, Final Report, p. 13.

148. Eisenhower, memorandum to the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

January 13, 1947, reprinted in Papers, Vol. VIII, p. 1447.

149. Eisenhower, memorandum to the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

January 16, 1945, reprinted in Papers, Vol. VII, p. 760.

150. Eisenhower, Final Report, p. 10.

151. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume I, p. 444.

152. Admittedly Bernard Brodie's The Absolute Weapon, (New

York: Harcourt, Brace, 1946) was published during Eisenhower's

tenure as Chief of Staff, but the truly seminal works on nuclear

strategy such as Brodie's Strategy in the Missile Age, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959); Herman Kahn,

On Thermonuclear War, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1960); and Henry A. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign

Policy, (New York: Harper and Brothers for the Council on Foreign

Relations, 1957) were written during the Eisenhower presidency,

i.e. after the advent of hydrogen weapons and ballistic missiles

had further revolutionized strategy.

153. Eisenhower, memorandum to key staff officers, December

10, 1945, reprinted in Papers, Vol. VII, p. 612.

154. Eisenhower, letter to Smith, March 18, 1947, p. 1609.

155. Eisenhower, Final Report, p. 14.

156. Eisenhower, letter to General Carl Spaatz, March 21,

1947, reprinted in Papers, Vol. VIII, p. 1617; and ibid.,

memorandum to James Forrestal, February 7, 1948, pp. 2247-2248.

157. Eisenhower, top secret memorandum to the Joint Chiefs

of Staff, April 2, 1946, reprinted in Papers, Vol. VII, p. 976.

158. Eisenhower, letter to Collins, February 28, 1951, pp.

79-81.

159. Eisenhower, memorandum to Directors and Chiefs of the

War Department, General and Special Staff Divisions and Bureaus,

and the Commanding Generals of the Major Commands, April 30,

1946, reprinted in Papers, Vol. VII, pp. 1046-1047.

160. Eisenhower, letter to Baruch, January 5, 1946, p. 736.

161. Eisenhower, Final Report, p. 15. A good example of

Eisenhower's efforts in this area is his long letter to Private

Gabriel N. Stilian in Papers, Vol. XII. This was in response to

a letter from Stilian questioning the need for American military

effort during peacetime and in it Eisenhower provided a sustained

explanation of his understanding of the cold war, especially its

military dimension.

162. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume I, p. 501.

163. Eisenhower, letter to Sid Richardson, March 29, 1951,

reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 158.

164. Eisenhower, Annual Report to the Standing Group, p. 8.

165. Eisenhower, letter to Paul van Zeeland (Belgian

Foreign Minister), September 11, 1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol.

XII, pp. 531-532.

166. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume I, pp. 502-506.

167. Eisenhower, letter to General Alphonse Juin, September

8, 1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 530.
168. Eisenhower, cable to the JCS, October 3, 1951,

reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 593. The omission of any

limitations on SACEUR's use of nuclear weapons is a further

illustration of Eisenhower's view of these as normal military

tools rather than as strategically revolutionary.

169. Eisenhower, diary entry of June 3, 1951, reprinted in

Papers, Vol. XII, pp. 6-7.

170. Eisenhower, diary entry of June 11, 1951, reprinted in

Papers, Vol. XII, p. 340. See also ibid., Annual Report to the

Standing Group, pp. 24-26.

171. Eisenhower, At Ease, p. 364.

172. Eisenhower, letter to Lucius Clay, March 30, 1951,

reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 171.

173. Eisenhower, letter to Edward John Bermingham, February

28, 1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 76. Emphasis in

original.

174. Eisenhower, letter to George Marshall, August 3, 1951,

reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 459.

175. Eisenhower, letter to Clay, March 30, 1951, p. 171.

176. Eisenhower, letter to Edward John Bermingham,

September 24, 1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 563.

177. Eisenhower, letter to Congressman James P. Richards,

September 19, 1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 549.

178. Eisenhower, At Ease, p. 368.

179. Eisenhower, letter to Averell Harriman, December 14,

1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 788.

180. Eisenhower, letter to George Marshall, March 12, 1951,

reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 118.

181. Eisenhower, letter to Harriman, April 2, 1951, p. 179.

182. Eisenhower, diary entry, March 17, 1951, reprinted in

Papers, Vol. XII, p. 138.

183. Eisenhower, letter to George Marshall, September 6,

1951, reprinted in Papers, Vol. XII, p. 525.

184. Weigley, History of the United States Army, p. 502.

185. On the role of acceptable risk in strategic planning,

see Steven Metz, "Analyzing Strategic and Operational Risk,"

Military Review, Vol. 71, November 1991, pp. 78-80.
186. "Text of Eisenhower's Address in Cincinnati on Foreign

Policy," The New York Times, September 23, 1952.

187. NSC 153/1, "Restatement of Basic National Security

Policy," June 10, 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Papers as President

of the United States, 1953-1961, (henceforth, Eisenhower Papers),

White House Office, Office of the Special Assistant for National

Security Affairs: Records 1952-61, NSC Series, Policy Papers

Subseries, Box 5, p. 2. The Eisenhower Papers are housed in the

Eisenhower Library, Abilene, KS.

188. The following section draws heavily on Steven Metz,

"Eisenhower and the Planning of American Grand Strategy," Journal

of Strategic Studies, Vol. 14, March 1991, pp. 49-71.

189. "The Evolution of Foreign Policy," Address by

Secretary Dulles, January 12, 1954, reprinted in U.S. National

Security Policy and Strategy: Documents and Policy Proposals, ed.

by Sam C. Sarkesian and Robert A. Vitas, Westport, CT: Greenwood,

1988, p. 54.

190. "National Security Council Meeting of 8 October 1953,"

Eisenhower Papers, Ann Whitman File, NSC Series, Box 4.

191. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, Garden City, NY:

Doubleday, 1963, p. 453.

192. Glenn H. Snyder, "The `New Look' of 1953," in Warner

R. Schilling, et. al., Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets, New York: Columbia University Press, 1962, pp. 436-437; and

Weigley, The American Way of War, p. 402.

193. Douglas Kinnard, President Eisenhower and Strategy

Management, Washington: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1989, p. 35.

194. Duane Windsor, "Eisenhower's New Look Reexamined: The

View From Three Decades," in Dwight D. Eisenhower: Soldier,

President, Statesman, ed. by Joann P. Krieg, Westport, CT:

Greenwood, 1987, p. 148.

195. NSC 153/1, pp. 5-6.

196. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, p. 452.

197. Ibid., p. 446.

198. Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume II: The

President, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984, p. 49.

199. Robert Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American

Strategy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957, pp. 28-45.

 See also Frederick M. Downey and Steven Metz, "The American

Political Culture and Strategic Planning," Parameters, Vol. 18,
September 1988, pp. 38-39.

200. "Brief of Approved U.S. National Security Objectives,

Policies and Programs With Respect to the USSR," n.d., Eisenhower

Papers, NSC Series, Subject Subseries, Box 8.

201. NSC 5412, "Covert Operations," March 15, 1954,

Eisenhower Papers, NSC Series, Policy Papers Subseries, Box 10. 

For detail see Stephen E. Ambrose, Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and

the Espionage Establishment, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1981.

202. B. Hugh Tovar, "Covert Action," in Intelligence

Requirements for the 1980s: Elements of Intelligence, revised

edition, ed. by Roy Godson, Washington: National Strategy

Information Center, 1983, p. 73.

203. "Expansion of Domestic and Foreign Prosperity,"

Excerpts from the President's Economic Report to the Congress,

reprinted in Department of State Bulletin, February 15, 1954, p.

219.

204. NSC 149/2, "Basic National Security Policies and

Programs in Relation to Their Costs," A Report to the National

Security Council by the Executive Secretary, April 29, 1953,

Eisenhower Papers, NSC Series, Policy Papers Subseries, Box 4, p.

1.

205. Eisenhower diary entry, reprinted in The Eisenhower

Diaries, ed. by Robert H. Ferrell, New York: W.W. Norton, 1981,

p. 307.

206. Harold J. Clem, Mobilization Preparedness, Washington:

National Defense University, 1983, p. 66.

207. Ibid., p. 67.

208. "The New Framework for the Mutual Security Program:

Report to Congress on the Mutual Security Program, August 17,

1953," reprinted in Documents on American Foreign Relations 1953, ed. by Peter V. Curl, New York: Harper and Brothers for the

Council on Foreign Relations, 1954, pp. 68-69.

209. Eisenhower, "Our Quest for Peace and Freedom,"

reprinted in Department of State Bulletin, April 16, 1956, p.

702.

210. Eisenhower, Waging Peace, Garden City, NY: Doubleday,

1965, p. 313.

211. NSC 149/2, p. 8.

212. See Steven Metz, "American Attitudes Toward

Decolonization in Africa," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 99,

Fall 1984, pp. 515-534.
213. NSC 153/1, p. 8.

214. "Memorandum of Decision at the 136th Meeting of the

National Security Council," March 11, 1953, reprinted in Foreign

Relations of the United States, 1952-54, Volume VIII, Washington,

DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988, p. 1124.

215. NSC 5501, "Basic National Security Policy," January 6,

1955, Eisenhower Papers, NSC Series, Policy Papers Subseries, Box

14, p. 13.

216. NSC 149/2, p. 1.

217. While lower taxes were an Administration goal, early

strategy documents like NSC 153/1 admitted that until the war in

Korea ended, the best that could be hoped for was to hold tax

rates steady.

218. "Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American

People," January 17, 1961, reprinted in Public Papers of the

Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960-61, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961, p. 1038.

219. "Principles of U.S. Foreign Policy," Address by the

President, reprinted in Department of State Bulletin, September

13, 1954, p. 360.

220. NSC 162/2, "Basic National Security Policy," October

30, 1953, Eisenhower Papers, NSC Series, Policy Papers Subseries,

Box 6, p. 20.

221. NSC 153/1, p. 8.

222. Ambrose, Eisenhower, Volume I, p. 450.

223. "Remarks to the Members of the United States Committee

for United Nations Day," September 23, 1953, reprinted in Public

Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D.

Eisenhower, 1953, (henceforth, Public Papers, 1953), Washington,

DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960, p. 605.

224. "State of the Union 1956," reprinted in Department of

State Bulletin, January 16, 1956, p. 81.

225. "An Expression of Faith in the United Nations,"

Remarks by Secretary Dulles, reprinted in Department of State

Bulletin, March 16, 1953, p. 403.

226. "Meeting with Nelson Rockefeller," May 24, 1955,

Eisenhower Papers, Whitman File, Ann Whitman Diary Series, Box 5.

227. "NSC Progress Report on Implementation of the Foreign

Information Program and Psychological Warfare Planning," February
20, 1953, Eisenhower Papers, NSC Series, Policy Papers Subseries,

Box 1. See also Robert E. Summers, ed., America's Weapons of

Psychological Warfare, New York: H.W. Wilson, 1951.

228. James S. Lay, Jr., "Memorandum for the National

Security Council on the Foreign Information Program and

Psychological Warfare Planning," March 15, 1955, Eisenhower

Papers, NSC Series, Policy Papers Subseries, Box 3.

229. "Remarks to the Staff of the United States Information

Agency," November 10, 1953, Public Papers, 1953, p. 754.

230. NSC 153/1, p. 9.

231. "Text of Gen. Eisenhower's Foreign Policy Speech in

San Francisco," The New York Times, October 9, 1952. Emphasis

added.

232. Kinnard, President Eisenhower and Strategy Management, p. 39.

233. "Conversation with Malcolm Muir on Colonialism," May

25, 1955, Eisenhower Papers, Whitman File, Ann Whitman Diary

Series, Box 5.

234. Henry A. Byroade (Assistant Secretary of State for

Near Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs), "The World's

Colonies and Ex-Colonies: A Challenge to America," State

Department Press Release 605, October 30, 1953, p. 3.

235. See, for example, the public addresses and radio and

television talks given in support of the defense budget and

foreign aid: "National Security and the Cost of Waging Peace,"

reprinted in Department of State Bulletin, June 3, 1957, pp.

875-877; and "The Need for Mutual Security in Waging the Peace,"

reprinted in Department of State Bulletin, June 10, 1957, pp.

915-920.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

STEVEN METZ is an Associate Professor at the Air War College

where he teaches courses on international security studies,

strategic psychology, nuclear warfighting, and Latin American

politics. He has served on the faculty at the U.S. Army Command

and General Staff College and at several universities, and has

been a consultant to political campaigns and organizations. Dr.

Metz holds a B.A. and M.A. in International Studies from the

University of South Carolina, and a Ph.D. in Political Science

from the Johns Hopkins University. He has written on strategy,

military planning, and national security affairs for publications

such as Journal of Strategic Studies, Parameters, Strategic

Review, Comparative Strategy, Conflict, and Military Review.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General William A. Stofft

Commandant

******

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Director

Colonel John W. Mountcastle

Acting Director of Research

Dr. Gary L. Guertner

Author

Dr. Steven Metz

Editor

Mrs. Marianne P. Cowling

Secretary

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

******

Cover Artist

Lawrence C. Miller

Composition

Daniel B. Barnett