Download Unit 7.3 Eisenhower Presidency

UNIT 8.3 EISENHOWER AND THE WORLD DURING HIS TIME
 Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (1890 – 1969), President: 1953 – 1961, Republican
 Won election due to his popularity from his role as __________________________forces during WWII
 Determined to prevent the spread of __________but also dedicated to scaling back ________spending
 Chose to focus on nuclear weapons as a cheap way to deter communist aggression
 Nuclear Holocaust?
 After the Soviets acquired the atomic bomb, Americans were worried about _____________ against US
 Many families constructed special underground bunkers (called "__________")
 Cities also designated subway tunnels and other underground structures as public fallout shelters
 Students were taught in school how to “________” in the event of a surprise attack through training
 While these efforts reassured the public, in reality they offered little real protection
 The Nuclear Arms Race
 Both the Soviets and the Americans rapidly built enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world
 “MAD” (Mutually Assured Destruction) was the theory that the ______ nuclear weapons both sides
had, the ________the world was because it made a nuclear war unwinnable
 Brinksmanship Under Eisenhower
 Term originally coined by Eisenhower’s Secretary of State _________
 ____________ was the practice of escalating international tensions to the brink of war, with the hope
that the other side will "______" and back down at the last minute and thereby give you an advantage in
future negotiations
 Domino Theory
 Eisenhower believed strongly in the idea that if you let even a single nation fall to communism, then you
would set off a chain reaction where its neighbors would also fall to communism (like dominos)
 To keep the "dominos" from falling, Eisenhower ordered the _______ to stage covert (secret)
interventions in several countries
 Communism in Cuba
 Many U.S. business held large investments in Cuba in 1950s, but those investments were jeopardized
when the government was overthrown by communist rebels under the leadership of __________
 U.S. leaders were alarmed by suddenly having a communist state 90 miles off the US coast
 The Eisenhower Doctrine
 In 1957, Eisenhower pledged American assistance to __________________ which was threatened by
________
 Almost immediately, US forces were sent to _______________to help combat communist rebels
 The Suez Crisis
 The U.S. withdrew financial support from an Egyptian dam project over Egyptian weapons purchases
that threatened _________________
 In response, Egypt confiscated the Suez Canal from French and British investors in order to raise funds
for the dam
 Britain and France (as well as the Israelis) sent in paratroopers to retake the canal, leading the _______
(who saw an opportunity to win Egypt as an ally) to threaten war
 Eisenhower forced _____________ to withdraw, but the damage was already done - many Arab states,
already upset by Western support of the Jewish state in Israel, now saw the West as the enemy and
aligned themselves with the Soviets
 Nikita Khrushchev (1894 - 1971) Comes to Power in the ___________
 Khrushchev emerged as head of the Soviet Union after a brief power struggle following the death of
Josef Stalin in 1953
 Khrushchev was much more _________ than Stalin in Soviet domestic issues, but more also
___________ in foreign policy, pushing the S.U. to the brink of war with the US on several occasions
 The U-2 Incident (1960)
 Just weeks before a major U.S.- Soviet peace summit, the Soviets shot down an American U-2 spy plane
over their airspace and captured the pilot, ____________________
 The incident marked a turning point in US-Soviet relations, as the peace summit was cancelled and the
American pilot was tried as a ____ and sentenced to prison (the Soviets later exchanged him for one of
their own captured spies)
 The Federal Aid Highway Act (1956)
 Eisenhower authorized the spending of $25 billion in federal funds to build 41,000 miles of highways
over a period of __________
 These ____________ were built in order to allow the speedy movement of troops and supplies around
the country in case of invasion or other national emergency
 The Space Race
 Both the US and USSR had captured German rocket scientists and were pursuing missile technologies
 Starting in 1957, these technologies were used to compete against each other for control of _____ – a
multi-billion dollar “space race” to see who could accomplish certain objectives or discoveries first
 The development of ICBMs (_________________________) allowed both sides to mount _________
onto long-range rockets which could be launched against distant targets, as well as to launch objects
into outer space
 Sputnik I (1957)
 The first _______________ to attain orbit around the earth (satellite)
 Sputnik I launched by the Soviets in Oct. 1957, followed by Sputnik II (which carried the first
living creature into space, a ___________) in November
 Triggered a panic in the US, as Americans worried the Soviets were gaining a advantage over US
 The National Defense Education Act (1958)
 Eisenhower dramatically increased spending on education, especially in ______________
 Passed in response to the belief that the U.S. was falling behind the_______ in scientific and
technological fields
 The Act increased the number of high-school graduates who went on to college from less than
____ in 1950 to over _________ by 1970
 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
 Created in _________
 NASA was created as a civilian agency to take over space exploration programs from the various
________________ and increase coordination and efficiency