Triangular Francs: The Eisenhower Administration’s Complicated Franco-American-South Vietnamese System of Foreign Aid to Saigon

This article examines the little-known system of foreign aid that the Eisenhower administration called “triangular trade.” Created to increase development aid without specific Congressional authorization, U.S. officials managed it chaotically and often secretly. This article analyzes U.S. application of this policy in relations with France, focusing on an examination of “triangular francs” whose most important manifestation occurred in South Vietnam. It tries to understand the complicated and often contentious relationships between the three nations with respect to “triangular francs,” illustrating its often neo-colonial aspects. After first presenting the system, the article proceeds to examine each of the three participants’ role in it and reservations about it. In particular, it seeks to show how Saigon’s leaders sought to influence the system to make it more advantageous to them and the impact this had on both Paris and Washington.

“The United States Cannot Afford to Lag Behind Russia”: Making the Case for an American Nuclear Icebreaker, 1957-1961

Between 1957 and 1961, members of Congress spearheaded efforts to gain authorization for the U.S. Coast Guard to construct a nuclear-powered icebreaker. This article uses congressional hearings, debates, and media coverage to conduct a frame analysis and map the arguments, themes, and stories used to convince decision-makers to build the vessel. While state competition became the central frame used by American nuclear icebreaker proponents, national security, science and technology, an uncertain future, and technical details about the existing fleet’s decline were also popular narratives. Although the push for a nuclear icebreaker enjoyed popular bi-partisan and bi-cameral support in Congress, it failed to convince a budget-conscious Eisenhower administration. De 1957 à 1961, les membres du Congrès se sont efforcés d’obtenir l’autorisation de la Garde côtière américaine de construire un brise-glace à propulsion nucléaire. À l’aide d’audiences du Congrès, de débats et de reportages dans les médias, cet article effectue une analyse de cadre et recense les arguments, les thèmes et les récits qui ont servi à convaincre les décideurs de construire le navire. Alors que les partisans américains des brise-glaces nucléaires se sont principalement fiés à la concurrence entre états comme leur cadre principal, la sécurité nationale, la science et la technologie, un avenir incertain et des détails techniques concernant le déclin de la flotte existante étaient également des conceptions populaires. Bien que la pression en faveur d’un brise-glace nucléaire ait bénéficié d’un appui populaire bipartite et bicaméral au Congrès, elle n’a pas réussi à convaincre l’administration Eisenhower soucieuse de son budget.

Israel, Egypt, the United States, and the 1956 War

During the early 1950s, there were a number of secret negotiations between Nasser and Moshe Sharett, the leading Israeli government dove. Nasser agreed to reach a peace agreement with Israel if it turned over the Negev Desert to Egypt. However, the negotiations were deliberately sabotaged by Ben-Gurion and Dayan, who sought further Israeli territorial gains in Gaza and parts of the Sinai, for both defensive and Zionist expansionist goals. In 1956, Israel, Britain, and France reached a secret agreement to attack Egypt and overthrow Nasser. Though the attack was successful, they were forced to withdraw from their territorial seizures in Sinai and the Suez Canal by threats of Soviet military intervention and intense US pressures, as the Eisenhower administration threatened to end all US assistance to Israel. Nasser’s determination to reverse the humiliation put Egypt and Israel on the road to the 1967 war.

The Historic Conflicts of Our Time

This chapter talks about Ezra Taft Benson who commenced work as secretary of agriculture in the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration in 1953, while serving as one of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It describes Benson as a central figure in postwar American politics who represented the confluence and conflict between the various stripes of Mormon and American conservatism. It also discusses how Benson was the subject of national media interest and scrutiny in the 1950s and 1960. The chapter points out how Benson often took clear and controversially conservative positions on many of the historic conflicts of the twentieth century, such as anticommunism, the women's movement, international and domestic conflicts, and the culture wars. It traces American public representations of Mormonism by looking at Benson as a media filter.

The Bush Administration’s Decision to Surge in Iraq

This chapter argues—using the Eisenhower administration as a model of peacetime national security decision making—that the surge decision-making process displayed by the oral histories was idiosyncratic, excessively compartmentalized, and profoundly flawed. No president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has fully adopted his model, and each has tailored procedures appropriate for his needs. The Bush process had to take into account his lack of expertise in military affairs, an increasingly polarized political climate, the legacy of the Vietnam War, the proliferation of leaks of sensitive information in the new media age, the resistance of the uniformed military leadership, and most important, Rumsfeld. Administration insiders argue that for these reasons Bush jettisoned fundamental tenets of Eisenhower's system in an effort to make a virtue out of necessity. Yet the evidence suggests that Eisenhower's best practices are just that—best practices. It further suggests that their rigorous application would have benefited Bush's process by expediting the instigation of a comprehensive review, co-opting opponents of a change in strategy, mitigating politicization, facilitating the exchange of information and advice, and accelerating implementation.

U.S. Perceptions of the Communist Threat in Iran during the Mossadegh Era

Most studies of the coup d’état in Iran in August 1953—a coup backed by U.S. and British intelligence agencies—attribute it at least partly to U.S. concerns about the threat of a Communist takeover in Iran. This article examines the evidence available to U.S. officials about the nature of the Communist threat in Iran prior to the coup, in the form of reports, analyses, and policy papers written on this subject at the time by U.S. officials. The documentation reveals that U.S. policymakers did not have compelling evidence that the threat of a Communist takeover was increasing substantially in the months before the coup. Rather, the Eisenhower administration interpreted the available evidence in a more alarming manner than the Truman administration had. The coup the administration undertook in response was therefore premature, at best.