The Cold War
"Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind."
-President John F. Kennedy in his Address to the UN General Assembly (September 25, 1961)
FOREIGN POLICY
 Eisenhower Meets with Dulles 1956 |  Suez Crisis in 195626 July 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announces the nationalization of a joint British-French enterprise--the Suez Canal Company. |  Korean War Armistice 1950 - 1953Eisenhower convinces the leaders of South Korea and North Korea to sign an armistice; 22 July 1953. |
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 U-2 Incident Francis Powers 19601 May 1960, an American U-2 plane is shot down over the Soviet Union. Its pilot Francis Gary Powers story of his purpose gives proof to the Soviet Union that the plane was being used as "covert" surveillance aircraft. |  Geneva Conference Summit 1955President Eisenhower attends the Geneva conference on disarmament and relief of tensions. |
Eisenhower was elected President of the US in 1952, right on the heels of the escalating conflict in Korea. The Cold War had officially begun two years prior to his election in 1950 with the beginning of the Korean War. President Eisenhower immediately established a foreign policy that focused on the containment of communism. His Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was essential to a foreign policy that was strongly anti-communist and responsible for how the Cold War and US involvement in Cold War conflicts escalated. The Eisenhower Administration was characterized by the "New Look." The New Look was a policy of containment to prevent the spread of Soviet Communism to areas where it was not already established. New Look policy was based on the belief that if the Soviet Union could not expand its influence, the Soviet system would collapse. By the end of the Cold War era, this belief is proven true when the Berlin Wall is brought down in 1989 and the Soviet Union follows in its footsteps in 1991. The collapse of the Soviet Union emphasized the dependence of Soviet power on the size of its influence in relation to its strength.
New Look policy was put into effect by:
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Creating SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) to surround the Soviet Union to combat the spread of communism
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Use of military power
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Use of the CIA for covert operations (that generally were not very effective, e.g. the Bay of Pigs Invasion)
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Aiding nations resisting communist coercion, which led to involvement in conflicts like the Vietnam War and the Korean War
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Increasing reliance on nuclear weapons
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Brinkmanship
The policy of brinkmanship was proposed by US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Brinkmanship was an aggressive policy that when theoretically put into use was supposed to show America's willingness to use nuclear weapons as an offense strategy. Brinkmanship was supposed to be something that intimidated the USSR by boasting US nuclear capabilities.