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A review by gregbrown
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle to Save the World by Evan Thomas
2.0
Bleh. Author clearly wants you to admire and like Eisenhower but the book's contents are either unconvincing or damning.
For unconvincing, take the book's central argument: Eisenhower was actually just bluffing every time he pondered or threatened to use nuclear weapons, bluffing so hard that even his own aides believed he would use them. This is Thomas' inference from Ike being a devoted poker and then bridge player, which is pretty bizarre. Ike was repeatedly saying in internal meetings that they should treat nukes as they would any conventional weapon, and asking about the possibilities of using some in crises. He was just bluffing his own staff?
For damning, take Eisenhower's method of public communication: deliberately bland and sometimes confusing to avoid revealing any actual information. When it worked, Ike was able to deftly avoid topics... but when it didn't, it made him look disastrously out of touch. And oftentimes the very topics they wanted to avoid were avoided for not so good reasons! Or take his pretty lax treatment of personnel, keeping not only Allan Dulles around but also his brother John Foster Dulles. Ike kept John Foster around to play the bad cop to his good cop routine, but that just places JF's extremism even more his fault.
And even if you're willing to forgive Eisenhower for pushing the CIA's reign of terror as cheaper than a larger conventional army, the book itself is kinda repetitive. Again and again we hear about his temper. So many anecdotes about his temper. And his health is terrible all the time too.
Anyways, a good breezy overview of Eisenhower's foreign policy, but not a particularly insightful one. Or at least, not brimming with the sort of insights it thinks it's giving.
For unconvincing, take the book's central argument: Eisenhower was actually just bluffing every time he pondered or threatened to use nuclear weapons, bluffing so hard that even his own aides believed he would use them. This is Thomas' inference from Ike being a devoted poker and then bridge player, which is pretty bizarre. Ike was repeatedly saying in internal meetings that they should treat nukes as they would any conventional weapon, and asking about the possibilities of using some in crises. He was just bluffing his own staff?
For damning, take Eisenhower's method of public communication: deliberately bland and sometimes confusing to avoid revealing any actual information. When it worked, Ike was able to deftly avoid topics... but when it didn't, it made him look disastrously out of touch. And oftentimes the very topics they wanted to avoid were avoided for not so good reasons! Or take his pretty lax treatment of personnel, keeping not only Allan Dulles around but also his brother John Foster Dulles. Ike kept John Foster around to play the bad cop to his good cop routine, but that just places JF's extremism even more his fault.
And even if you're willing to forgive Eisenhower for pushing the CIA's reign of terror as cheaper than a larger conventional army, the book itself is kinda repetitive. Again and again we hear about his temper. So many anecdotes about his temper. And his health is terrible all the time too.
Anyways, a good breezy overview of Eisenhower's foreign policy, but not a particularly insightful one. Or at least, not brimming with the sort of insights it thinks it's giving.