The presidential election of 1952, unlike most others before and 
since, was dominated by foreign policy, from the bloody stalemate 
of Korea to the deepening menace of international communism. During 
the campaign, Dwight Eisenhower and his spokesmen fed the public's 
imagination with their promises to liberate the peoples of Eastern 
Europe and undertake an aggressive program to roll back Soviet 
influence. But time and again during the 1950s, Eisenhower and his 
advisers found themselves powerless to shape the course of events in 
Eastern Europe.

    
In Dueling Visions, Ronald R. Krebs argues that two very different 
images of Eastern Europe's ultimate status competed to guide American 
policy during this period: Finlandization and rollback. Rollback, 
championed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Central Intelligence 
Agency, was synonymous with liberation as the public understood it - 
detaching Eastern Europe from all aspects of Soviet control. 
Surprisingly, the figure most often linked to liberation - Secretary 
of State John Foster Dulles - came to advocate a more subtle and 
measured policy that neither accepted the status quo nor pursued 
rollback. This American vision for the region held up the model of 
Finland, imagining a tier of states that would enjoy domestic 
autonomy and perhaps even democracy but whose foreign policy would 
toe the Soviet line.


Krebs analyzes the conflicting logics and webs of assumptions 
underlying these dueling visions and closely examines the struggles 
over these alternatives. Case studies of the American response to 
Stalin's death and to the Soviet-Yugoslav rapprochement reveal the 
eventual triumph of Finlandization both as vision and as policy. 
Finally, Krebs suggests the study's implications for international 
relations theory and contemporary foreign affairs.


_________________________________________________________

RONALD R. KREBS, a doctoral candidate in the Department of 
Political Science at Columbia University in New York, has 
contributed articles on international relations to such journals 
as International Organization and the Journal of Strategic Studies, 
as well as to edited volumes.


Number Seven: Foreign Relations and the Presidency