Conditional Partners: Eisenhower, the United Nations and the Search for a Permanent Peace

This study explores the development of the United States' relationship with the United Nations during the years of the Eisenhower administration. The author seeks to show that although the administration initially intended to use the UN as a means to implement major aspects of its foreign agenda, as the realities of Cold War politics set in, both at home and abroad, the UN increasingly served less as an instrument of aggressive foreign policy than as a shield to defend the administration and its interests against unforeseen event. The book begins by describing the administration's policy-making structure, the principal players' views on the UN, and the early months of the Eisenhower presidency. Detailing the United States' attempt to use the UN to resolve the threats to international peace that arose in Korea, Indochina, Guatemala, the Suez, Hungary and the Congo, she explores a variety of thematic issues - including the administration's disarmament policy at the UN and its approach to decolonization and the growing demands of the Third World.