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Stalin wishes to increase the power of the Soviet Union at the expense of her political enemies. " The policy of containment that the Truman administration implemented meant that diplomacy was not a viable option. Yalta and Potsdam had proved that little could be done to quell the expansion of the Soviet Union and left only an "aggressive containment policy" and William Appleman Williams stated that a crucial point of the containment policy "is that Acheson and Truman had no hesitation in using force. " Truman believed that diplomacy was futile and this was reflected in his policy.

Eisenhower's diplomacy appeared to promote the same uncompromising determination as Truman's. Post Revisionist John Lewis Gaddis also believed that the policy promoted brinkmanship and was inadequate "to deal with less-than-total challenges. " This does not however take into account his diplomatic engagement with the Soviet Union. Although Eisenhower is seen firstly as a "General" President, he also pursued diplomatic channels with the new Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In his "Atoms for Peace" speech to the UN on 8th December 1953 in which he professed to lead through "...those same great concepts of universal peace and human dignity which are so clearly etched in [The UN Charter] " Later in his diaries he stated that his aim was "get the Soviet Union working with us and the good of mankind as a globe; it might develop into something broader " Unfortunately, Khrushchev was unresponsive to this and its successor the "Open Skies" project. It was clear that Khrushchev was as unresponsive as Stalin. In 1955 on a visit to East Germany he declared that the Soviet Union and America would agree "when Shrimp can whistle from hilltops. "

Both Truman and Eisenhower faced a proverbial Gordian knot in their dealings with the Soviet Union. In the face of "World Communism," an unresponsive and brazen Soviet policy which NSC-68 deemed as insidious and unrelenting both Presidents with differing ideologies produced similar results. It can be said that the lack of movement and the shift in policy to NSC-68 was a result of soviet expansionism and the same conclusion could be said of the New Look Policy. However both Truman and Eisenhower implemented forms of blackmail for Russia, for Truman this came in his response to Greece and Turkey and for Eisenhower in the policy of "massive retaliation." The obvious difference between these was the fiscal considerations gave to Eisenhower. His office started

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