ABSTRACT
Although Dwight David Eisenhower ran for president as a Republican, he had no quarrel with the interventionist foreign policy of Harry Truman and the Democrats. Eisenhower entered the race for the Republican nomination in part because his concern for collective security clashed with the isolationism of the conservative wing of the Republican Party and its favorite, Senator Robert A. Taft. But Eisenhower shared Taft’s fear that the free-spending ways of the Democrats would bring the United States to bankruptcy and weaken its international position. His desire to cut the budget could not help but influence his foreign policy. He was appalled that the defense expenditures Truman projected in accordance with NSC-68 would result in a $44 billion deficit over the next five years. (In expressing his horror at Truman’s defense budgets, however, Eisenhower never acknowledged, then or later, that a good portion of the increases in defense expenditures resulted from his own requests as NATO commander.)
