The Collapse of Liberation Rhetoric: The Eisenhower Administration and the 1956 Hungarian Crisis

This paper willanalyze Eisenhower's policy towards Eastern Europe in general and towardsHungary in particular from the perspective of the gaping gulf betweenhigh-minded rhetoric and the political realities of the Cold War and thenuclear arms race. While the Eisenhower Administration sounded thehigh-faluting rhetoric of “liberation of captive peoples”from communism andengaged in the short-lived effort to launch a “Volunteer Freedom Corps”toundermine communism in Eastern Europe, the political reality was that uprisingsagainst communism were not supported in East Germany in 1953, neither in Polandand Hungary in 1956. The Cold War regimes in Central Europe, along with theestablishment of deterrence strategy, made the cautious Eisenhoweradministration not dare actively support rebellions in Eastern Europe. Theprice of an escalation of conflict towards nuclear war was deemed toodangerous; no direct interventions were launched in the Soviet sphere ofinfluence. The price the Eisenhower administration also had to pay was a lossof trust among the “captive peoples”. Eisenhower's rhetoric was revealed to beonly propaganda