Where the Domino Fell - America And Vietnam 1945-1995 by James S. Olson, Randy W. Roberts

food, weapons, and ammunition to the besieged soldiers. That same day armed Montagnard tribesmen, allied with the French, realized their plight and fled Dien- bienphu. France needed help.
     
    On March 20, General Paul Ely, chief of staff of the French armed forces, flew to Washington for a meeting with President Dwight Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. A member of the West Point class of 1915—called the “Class on Which the Stars Fell” because 59 of its 164 graduates rose to the rank of brigadier general or higher—Ike was perhaps the best of the group. As commander of the European operations in World War II, he had earned a reputation for decisiveness, energy, intelligence, and skill in handling temperamental and egotistical individuals. Said FDR’s press secretary of Ike: “To acquire these characteristics he worked constantly, sleeping only five hours a day . . . and laboring seven days a week and holidays. Chain smoking cigarettes, he had an inexhaustible supply of nervous energy” Once in the presidency, Eisenhower seemed more subdued. White House reporters recall not his energy and precise thinking but rather his mangled syntax and his fondness for golfing and bridge—a very intellectual game: Ike could remember all the cards of each suit as a game was played. But behind the mild facade Ike was still in charge. In foreign affairs, he made all the important decisions. Intellectuals and English teachers could fault his syntax, but as Fred I. Greenstein notes, Eisenhower “had geometric precision in stating the basic conditions shaping a problem, deducing their implications, and weighing the costs and benefits of alternative possible responses” As Ely talked, the geometry of Ike’s mind was calculating.
     
    The French general wanted to make sure that American assistance would continue under Eisenhower. Although he did not know how the communists could “continue to suffer the losses they have been taking . . . I don’t know how they can stay in the battle,” Ely readily admitted that Dienbienphu was finished. He made no specific request for anything more than continued American financial support. When the meeting concluded, Eisenhower asked Radford to see whether the United States could offer some more assistance to the French. Without the knowledge of Eisenhower, Dulles, or even other joint chiefs, Radford with the assistance of American and French officers in Saigon was hatching a rescue plan.
     
    Radford, a graduate of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, had commanded aircraft carriers in the Pacific during World War II. In May 1953, when President Eisenhower toured the Pacific and East Asia to assess the Korean situation, Radford was commander of naval forces in the Pacific. He spent some time with Eisenhower during the tour and impressed the president with his grasp of Asian affairs. Eisenhower named Radford chief of naval operations in 1953 and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By that time Radford was a saber-rattling darling of the Republican right. A zealous convert to complicated weapons technology and air power, Radford had endeared himself to a number of conservative politicians during World War II when he said the only approach to the Japanese was “to kill the bastards scientifically” Infantry combat “was messy and wasted personnel” Strategic and tactical bombing was “precise and clean” Radford was convinced that Asia, not Europe, would be central to American foreign policy for the rest of the twentieth century. Late in 1953, when the president expressed concern about the defense budget, Radford became the author of the “New Look” Radford urged, and Eisenhower and Dulles accepted, the notion that instead of planning for a variety of military contingencies—strategic nuclear war, conventional war, limited nuclear war, and guerrilla war—the United States should plan for a war in which