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The Incomparable Max Boot

Ironically, the two major black marks often cited against Eisenhower — the CIA’s overthrow of leftist leaders Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala — are undeserved. The Cold War was on, and Ike was justified in blocking rising communist influence in these two countries, even if critics now say he overreacted. ~Max […]

Ironically, the two major black marks often cited against Eisenhower — the CIA’s overthrow of leftist leaders Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala — are undeserved. The Cold War was on, and Ike was justified in blocking rising communist influence in these two countries, even if critics now say he overreacted. ~Max Boot, The Los Angeles Times

Now I know that history is not Max Boot’s strong suit (though he certainly likes to talk as if it were), but must we be subjected to this?  If there had been any real and considerable communist influence in Iran in 1953, Ike would have possibly been justified in checking it.  As some have understood for a long time, and as more are becoming aware, Mossadegh did not represent any such thing.  Since 1953 was little more than toppling a democratically elected Iranian government because of its dispute over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company’s holdings and installing a reliable dictator who would guarantee British interests and the oil supply, I can’t say that he gets off quite that easily.  It may have been the case that toppling Mossadegh was still the right thing to do to secure strategic U.S. interests, but it is not at all obvious.

But perhaps more objectionable than whitewashing 1953 as a good act of anticommunism, which every good Republican learned to do from the time he was knee-high to a statue of Churchill, is the downright bizarre part where he says that Eisenhower “presided over” the Suez crisis and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.  He was President at the time.  That part is true.  But does Boot expect us to blame him for doing the right thing (objected to the aggression and latter-day imperialism of the allies in Suez) and the prudent thing (not going to war with the USSR over Hungary) respectively? 

It is very easy for us to sit here 50 years after the fact and declare that we should have gone to war over Hungary.  I am part Hungarian, and I sympathise tremendously with the patriotic heroes of 1956–the wrongdoing was to ever give them any hope that we would support them, when there was never a realistic chance of that happening.  If Eisenhower erred with Hungary, it was by making ludicrous promises he could not keep–on that, and that alone, Boot is right.  In other words, Eisenhower was wrong to do even as much as he did for the cause of rollback–a telling admission from someone who subscribes to something fairly similar with respect to U.S. policy in the Near East.  Yes, Eisenhower did run on the rollback platform.  Thank God he recognised what a mistake such a platform was when the real test came.  Had he stuck to that policy, in spite of all the good reasons why he shouldn’t, a massively devastating war could have followed. 

Boot’s misreading of Eisenhower’s Suez response is worse.  The “odious thug,” as Boot calls him, was at the time of the Suez crisis a potential American client dictator (happily, we had no significant problems, real or rhetorical, with such clients back then) and, if brought into the orbit of the West, would have been a powerful bulwark against Soviet penetration of the Near East.  There was also the small matter of international law and the U.N. Charter–the Charter we were upholding officially when we and the U.N. (no laughing, please) defended South Korea only a few years before.  It would have been the height of hypocrisy and double standards to invoke international law against a war of aggression in 1950 and then turn around and ignore it six years later when our allies were doing the attacking.  Eisenhower justified his opposition to the attack specifically in terms of the integrity of international law.  If this was “misguided” anti-colonial sentiment, what would rightly guided anti-colonial sentiment be? 

Obviously, Max Boot, neo-imperialist and “hard Wilsonian” (don’t call him a neocon!) has no problem with wars of aggression or ignoring international law, so for him the solution in Suez, 1956 would have been clear.  For Eisenhower, who was actually responsible for policy in 1956, the opposite response was equally clear and he considered it just as necessary.  The context in which the man made the decision is very important.  In the 1950s, in the age of decolonisation and Third World nationalism, it was not yet the misguided policy of the U.S. government to identify every nationalist and independence movement with international communism.  Eisenhower was attempting to keep these new nationalist regimes from all falling under Moscow’s influence.  Opposing latter-day colonialist invasions seemed to be pretty obviously central to that goal.  That we proceeded to deviate from this approach rather spectacularly in Vietnam is obvious.  

Eisenhower’s responses to these crises greatly outweigh his blunders elsewhere, and bear the mark of a true American statesman who was considering America’s just interests.  Was he a “near-great” President?  I have my doubts, especially on domestic policy (though not for the reasons Boot gives), but he certainly deserves better than to be ridiculed by the silly man who longs for khaki and pith helmets and the domain that rules over palm and pine.

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