Quote of the Day (Dwight Eisenhower, on a Global ‘Community of Dreadful Fear and Hate’)

“Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

“Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.”—Soldier and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), “Military-Industrial Complex” Speech (Farewell Address to the Nation), Jan. 17, 1961

The last televised speech of Dwight Eisenhower to his countrymen, which occurred 65 years ago today, might be the most famous Presidential farewell address since George Washington left office, largely because the former Allied commander at D-Day unexpectedly cautioned about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex" that had developed in America because of World War II and the Cold War.

But, as I discovered when I read the text in full, other aspects of his speech have also proved relevant, in ways that few could have anticipated at the time.

Take scientific research, for instance. Ike not only speculated that “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite,” but conversely also admonished against “the prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money.”

If the second danger sounds familiar to you, it should. Keep in mind, for instance, this blog post from earlier this week from science magazine EOS:

"Academic science has been under pressure not only through the administration’s targeting of universities directly but also through its efforts to remake the federal grantmaking process, reduce the amounts and types of external research funded, and reduce budget appropriations for scientific research by more than 20% through large-scale cutbacks and reorganizations in federal science agencies. Unsurprisingly, the administration’s actions are having ripple effects for higher education, business (among companies who supply scientific products, for instance), and public health."

But the section of the speech that should receive the most renewed attention is the quote above, especially in light of Donald Trump’s refusal to rule out military force if the United States can’t purchase Greenland from Denmark.

As NATO’s first Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Eisenhower knew the organization’s importance in deterring the aggression of a larger power against a smaller nation. After all, two world wars in which he served began in precisely this manner.

He would be embarrassed at the thought that a later President of his own party is threatening the independence of a smaller member of NATO—and in this case, as well as in the current President’s inexplicable preference for Russia over Ukraine, is also risking the very existence of the alliance.

In a blog post from last March, David Lake, a senior fellow at the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, adeptly summarized the implications of this:

“This is the most basic rule of leadership: leaders need followers, and others will follow only if they are confident the leader is taking them where they want to go. To accept U.S. influence over their foreign policies, allies must have some confidence that Washington will be attentive to their needs. Allowing another country to exert authority over one’s policies is an awesome choice, and one made only if the ally is confident that this authority will be wielded in the common interest. In ignoring Europe, in the case of Ukraine; initiating trade wars and putting tariffs on our allies even before our geopolitical competitors; disparaging NATO; threatening to seize the Panama Canal, Greenland, and possibly Canada; and intervening in the domestic politics of our allies, Trump is flouting the basic rule of leadership."

Quote of the Day (Celeste Wallander, on ‘The Biggest Threat to NATO Today’)

“NATO can structure disincentives and punishments for backsliders, but only citizens can hold elected leaders accountable. Most important, the United States must rise to meet the challenge…. Americans must face the fact that the biggest threat to NATO today may be the United States itself. Regardless of political party and policy preferences, all Americans have a patriotic interest in protecting the laws, practices and institutions of U.S. liberal democracy. This is not merely a matter of domestic politics; it is also a matter of national security. Threats to democracy at home have already undermined Washington's ability to work with allies in a dangerous, uncertain, and threatening world. As the most powerful member of NATO, the United States must take the lead through a bipartisan defense of liberal institutions and values.”— Celeste Wallander, American international relations advisor and former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs at the U. S. Defense Department, “NATO’s Enemies Within: How Democratic Decline Could Destroy the Alliance,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2018

Since Ms. Wallander wrote this, NATO has been battered even more than what concerned her originally. The cause was the same, as indeed it has been with the tariff imbroglio: the President in charge at the time who inflicted on this country a diplomatic self-inflicted wound.

(The image of Celeste Wallander that accompanies this post was taken Feb. 22, 2022.)

This Day in Military History (Western Democracies Pledge Mutual Security With North American Treaty)

April 4, 1949—The countries who put their signature to the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington, DC, looked just like the Allied coalition that had recently won World War II in Europe—but with one notable exception: the Soviet Union, whose postwar threats to elected governments had alarmed its former partners.

Since the formation of this defensive pact, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has increased from its original 12 to 32 members. Its recent growth derives from the same factor that brought it into existence: a septuagenarian dictator who, in his quest to annex neighbors and subvert republics, inspires other nations to band together in mutual support.

Back in 1949, that authoritarian ruler was Joseph Stalin, who saw the chaos and devastation in the wake of WWII as an opportunity to expand Soviet influence, including through:

*reneging on its Yalta Conference promise of free elections in Poland;

*exploiting its continued military presence in Hungary to pressure non-Communist parties into submission;

*covertly backing an overthrow of the democratically elected government of Czechoslovakia by the nation’s Communist party;

*blockading Allied-controlled West Berlin in an unsuccessful attempt to incorporate the whole city into its orbit.

In 2024, the dictator is Vladimir Putin, whose revanchist nostalgia for the return of Russian influence has led him to invade Ukraine—a move that, in turn, led to a prompt application to join NATO by Finland and Sweden.

The West’s attempts to begin new eras of cooperation with Stalin and Putin quickly foundered as perceptions grew that these dictators were intent not just on cracking down on internal dissent but on posing a threat to Eastern Europe.

American, Britain, and French leaders had hoped to include the Soviets in a postwar Council of Foreign Ministers, according to a Truman Library oral history interview with John D. Hickerson, the Assistant Secretary of State generally credited with writing the text for what became the North Atlantic Treaty.

But, after 1947 conferences in Moscow and London that went nowhere because of Soviet intransigence, the three transatlantic partners determined to go their own way.

The genesis for the new system of cooperation came from British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, but the indispensable forces were the two American Secretaries of State when the treaty was hammered out in 1948 and early 1949, George Marshall and Dean Acheson.

The most important element of the North American Treaty may be Article 5, in which the signatories agreed that "an armed attack against one or more of them… shall be considered an attack against them all" and that following such an attack, each Ally would take "such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force" in response.

The first time that mutual-aid pledge would be invoked came not in response to a move by the USSR, but after 9/11—and it did not involve the US coming to the aid of the organization’s European members, but them supporting us in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center.

Hickerson’s oral history interview gives a strong sense of the improvisational nature of the discussions shaping the North Atlantic Treaty. 

The diplomats, he explained, were talking about “what we would do in the event of an attack, without considering anything beyond the political commitment to do that. And frankly in the back of our minds was the hope that that commitment itself would be enough to restrain any aggression.” 

It would not be until the following year, with the outbreak of the Korean War, before the “machinery” of NATO would be set up.

This brief history is worth keeping in mind in the present US. Presidential cycle, with one all-but-certain party nominee saying he would encourage Putin to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member that falls behind on its defense spending guidelines.

That Presidential candidate’s complaint about failing to meet these guidelines echoes the chief  American opponent of the pact back in 1949, Robert Taft, who saw it as “arming Western Europe at American expense.”

But the deeply conservative, anti-communist Republican Senator from Ohio was under no illusions about Stalin’s intentions and never praised his “strength.”

Moreover, the national defense spending percentages on which today’s isolationists fixate are, as mentioned earlier, guidelines, not ironclad commitments.

The Cold War between the US and USSR was often conducted without nuance and sometimes risked catastrophe. But NATO created a defensive alliance based on collective security—an arrangement missing before WWII that would have eased the task of countering Nazi aggression.

That alliance resulted in 75 years of peace, encouraging international commerce—the kind of minimal-cost arrangement that one might have hoped a once and future businessman might have better appreciated.

(The photo accompanying this post shows President Harry Truman with the diplomats from the countries signing the North Atlantic Treaty.)