The major conclusion I came to was that it is probable both Eisenhower and Khrushchev wanted a
    period of at least limited détente. Because of their own miscalculations about each other's behavior,
    that moment was lost.
           -Michael Beschloss

In the Spring of 1960, as President Eisenhower neared the end of his successful but uneventful presidency, he devoutly wished to cap off his career with a successful summit with the Soviet Union.  Having met with Khrushchev the previous year and established the "Spirit of Camp David", he envisioned forging a sort of détente and entering into some kind of arms treaty, perhaps a test ban, at a May meeting with the Soviet Premier in Paris.  But on May 1, 1960--celebrated as May Day in Europe and a holiday of great import in the Soviet Union--American pilot Francis Gary Powers and his U-2 spy plane were shot down over Russian territory.  The plane, on it's way from Peshawar, Pakistan to Bodo, Norway, would have been flying at an altitude of about 70,000 feet.  Russian SAMs had been steadily improving their range, and the danger of a shootdown was well understood at the highest levels of American government, in fact the President had ordered that he be given the right of final approval for each flight, but in that pre satellite era the spy planes were providing nearly all U.S. intelligence on the state of Russia's military, so Ike concluded that were worth the very high risk.  Moreover, the flights were done under CIA command, not the military, pilots had orders to commit suicide if shot down and neither they nor identifiable portions of the planes were expected to survive anyway, so the U.S. expected to maintain deniability.  The Eisenhower Administration did in fact initially deny that the U-2 was a spy plane, claiming it was a weather flight that blew off course.   In the event, Powers survived and Khrushchev, struggling to hold off "hard-liners" at home, chose to inflate the incident into a major provocation and, although the two sides went ahead with the Paris summit, it quickly degenerated into a diplomatic mess and the opportunity for a reduction in Cold War tensions was lost for a generation.

Michael Beschloss, who is a national treasure as regards study of the presidency, has done a masterful job of reconstructing the events surrounding the U-2 Affair.  He really brings the period and it's tensions to life, particularly the internal functioning of the Eisenhower administration.  To me, the most significant aspect of the book is Beschloss's argument that it was thanks to the spying of the U-2 that Eisenhower understood how weak the Soviets actually were and that Ike and Khrushchev basically had an implicit understanding that if the Soviet did not make a real effort to upgrade their sorry military capacity, the U.S. would act as if the Soviets posed a threat.  This allowed Ike to reign in the Military-Industrial Complex and balance the Federal budget, while at the same time permitting Khrushchev to swagger around the world stage as if the Soviets were our military equals.  True or not, this portrait comports with the image which has emerged in recent years of Eisenhower as a much more deft and nuanced leader than was previously understood to be the case.

Since this book was written before the fall of the Soviet Union, it is likely that someone taking a fresh look at the affair, particularly someone with access to Soviet archives, will have much detail to add to the Russian side of the story.  But it is hard to imagine someone producing any more readable an account of the whole incident.  If I have one reservation with the book, it is that Beschloss does not consider the broader question of whether detente was a good idea in and of itself.  Few would any longer argue that the final demise of the Evil Empire came only after they had stretched themselves to the limit.  A fuller discussion of what detente might have meant for the internal situation in Russia would have been helpful.  I'd be interested to know whether Beschloss thinks it would have weakened Communist control, which I doubt, or enabled them to devote more resources to productive domestic industries and thereby strenthened the regime's long term prospects.

At any rate, it's an excellent book and a really fascinating look at the Eisenhower presidency.  This one is most recommended.  Unfortunately, it's also out of print, so you might want to check ABE Books (I searched by author & they had a copy for $5) or your library, but it's worth tracking down.

(Reviewed:29-May-00)

Grade: (A) Orrin C. Judd

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