The Specter of Neutralism

...But it could at least enjoy a far superior bargaining position with regard to America...

...The same may be said for the relation between America and Western Europe...

...This complex seeks a psychological release: Europe seeks to prove not merely her "equality" but her "superiority" to the United States in those fields which still permit competition, i.e., culture and diplomacy...

...But two major qualifications must be noted: a) The economic aid was given to a status quo Europe, with all its tariff barriers, antediluvian monetary systems, economic rivalries and obsolescent technologies...

...It could not, and should not wish to be equidistant between the two major power blocs...

...it might even be a deterrent to those reactionary tendencies in the U. S. that keep gaining in power...

...But he knows in his heart that no matter how hard he works he hasn't the remotest chance of getting either...

...Everything needed for an analysis of neutralism is here, but it is all topsy-turvey...

...That the direction is vague should not be cause for criticism...

...And this the Eisenhower emphasis on military schemes cannot possibly do...

...166 • DISSENT • Spring 1954 We stress this essential fact because it is a point of departure for understanding those amorphous moods that in their sum compose neutralism...

...Nonetheless, the problem remains: what should be the role of this program in the over-all rebuilding of Western Europe...

...Like most composite pictures, this one bears only a faint resemblance to any living person...

...This policy, as C. L. Sulzberger puts it, means "that America might, indeed, fight to help Europe, but would allow it first to be occupied while it steadily bombed the aggressor...

...To be sure, this produced desirable results, and those socialists who put aside outworn dogmas and accepted the lifegiving features of American aid have proven, I think, to be correct...

...Suppose we dismiss the abstract anti-militarist views tradi tionally held in some radical circles and recognize the need for a European defense program...

...Western Europe, hoping for substantial tariff cuts and free currency convertibility, was disillusioned both as to the paltry recommendations and the hostile reception by Con gress...

...By subjugation we do not, of course, mean that a colonial-imperialist relationship exists between Europe and America...

...Many of the elements that go into neutralist sentiment are, in fact, dangerous and defeatist: they can result only in capitulation before Stalinism...

...and the masses' loss of a belief in the future...

...It offers tariff cuts only as part of a bargaining process in which other countries would have to yield something...

...a sense of helplessness before irresistible social forces...

...IV Neutralism is a mood, not a movement...

...or b) "pro-European," hoping to see the birth of a united continent that will be somewhat free from the manipulation of the two power blocs and that will regain the glory the individual European nations once had...

...Even if a united Europe were formed, its possibilities would be limited...

...The Stalinists fall into a separate category, not at all to be confused with the genuine neutralist type...

...This phenomenon, which has its roots in the huge excess of United States exports over its imports, has persisted in varying degree over a period of years...

...As The New York Times notes: The Randall report lives up to these popular [European] hopes on neither point...

...For the ruling strata of Western Europe neutralism is a device by which to resist American pressure and to steer a clever course between the two power blocs in behalf of their national class interests...

...Unless a balance can be restored there is real danger of a deep and perhaps disastrous fissure between the economies of Europe and America...

...Until such a development occurs, neutralism will remain the most widespread and most deeply felt political emotion of Europe...

...given the chronic need...

...flips in a subjective and unexplicated psychological characterization (inferiority complex) ; and only at the end mentions what is fundamental: the social conditions of Western Europe, of which the foremost fact is "the masses' loss of a belief in the future...

...Which points to an internal illness in the French economy and is not a consequence of dollar aid...

...a sentiment, not an ideology...

...the degree of class hostility being a function of the speed at which the classes diverge...

...usually it 168 • DISSENT • Spring 1954 reflects a furious resentment at some American general's readiness to declare Paris and Rome expendable, or of some American intellectual's earnest sermonizing on the advantages of democracy over totalitarianism, an idea that is supposed never to have occurred to Europeans...

...Knowing how their lot compares with the forward leaps in American standards during the past decade, the Europeans naturally feel a profound resentment, a sense of being trapped...

...It would still have to compete against rivals stronger than itself...

...Marx once said that the driving force behind the antagonisms between classes is not the absolute impoverishment of one class, but rather the "growing apart" of classes in terms of wealth, power and standards...

...is mainly a problem for countries that have not got it...

...If, as between the two slave states, there is a shade of inclination towards the East, it is partly the opportunistic accommodation that one makes to the nearer menace—plus a kind of persisting belief that the politics of the inheritors of the Russian Revolution, for all their present destructiveness, remain somehow geared to human ends...

...So long as Europe stagnates and America contributes to the stagnation, neutralism will remain the most powerful "underground" sentiment in Europe...

...So long as the continent retains the possibility of social health, neutralism will survive...

...Steadily—through and after the war—the balance of international trade has tilted in favor of America...

...This trend has not been stopped in the postwar period...

...This desire has been channeled by European political factions into two distinct movements closely akin to each Spring 1954 • DISSENT • 167 other—nationalism and neutralism...

...They understand that Russia is not to be influenced by written or verbal criticism, while American policy, if complaints are loud enough, may at least be modified...

...Strausz-Hupe begins with the fashionable device of lumping together the nationalist Right with "the Left" as a whole...

...As Special Ambassador Draper put it in 1952: The internal and intra-European financial and payment problems, serious as they are, nonetheless are overshadowed by the balance of payments problem of Western Europe vis-a-vis the dollar area...

...Given time, that is, the absence of war...

...But this hardly goes to the roots of neutralism...

...Those European intellectuals who are Stalinist or proRussian, an important minority, are not, alas, characterized by any lack of ardor: they have more than a shade of inclination...

...The entirely understandable rejection of such a policy by almost all Europeans, together with the equally understandable fear of German rearmament, helps again to fortify those unformulated sentiments that comprise neutralism...

...Sometimes it has gone so far as the disastrous slogan, "Rather Communism than War," though only in a few cases has this slogan been seriously meant...

...During the war years, naturally, the American export surplus was enormous, amounting in 1943 to $9.3 billions and in 1944 to $10.2 billions...

...Clearly, that is not the case, although by the sheer magnitude of its economic strength America does tend to override Europe...

...But now the period of large-scale aid to Europe is almost over, and precisely to the degree that there has been some revival of economic life, the continent feels a sharper desire to resist its status of economic subjugation...

...This is not the moment for hardened ideologies which, by their very "precision," only reveal their irrelevance...

...Why then is the bulk of European criticism directed against the United States...

...Not that the French worker envies the American his car or TV set...

...At the moment it takes the concrete form of resistance to ratification of EDC, demands for a lessening of the armament burden, pressure for increased East-West trade, etc...

...But the criticism that must be made of American policy is that instead of helping to blast apart this accumulation of muck, it allows the pile to become higher and higher...

...In a purely military sense, it is doubtful that anything the U. S. or Western Europe can do would provide a genuine check to Russian attack...

...This has been the pattern of events over the past few decades...

...No important change is foreseen in the economic relations between Europe and America, and the galling dollar imbalance will be closed, if at all, only by the "mutual military aid program," that is, by American financing of European rearmament...

...In 1952 the American balance of trade came to $4.3 billions...

...This, rather than abstract and frayed homilies in behalf of socialism, is what Western socialists should be urging today...

...Victimized by the archaic economy of his own country and by its dependence on America, he declines, through those blunt political gestures that are part of his inheritance, to support either the "line" of his own government or those groups that are unqualifiedly pro-American...

...The real need, to which military defense must be subordinated, is for an economic-political revival of Western Europe so as to make it a viable social unit and provide it with the elan that is the first prerequisite for its survival...

...Yet every serious intellectual in Europe realizes how quickly this slogan would be transformed into the reality of Communism and War...

...The ratio between American expenditure for military rearmament of Europe and its economic-technical aid program becomes increasingly lop sided: at present 75 per cent of the total American expenditure in Europe goes for arms...

...Western Europe has increasingly felt itself to be an object manipulated by forces it cannot control...

...In the case of France, the rate of increase in productivity since the end of the nineteenth century is 1.5 per cent, while the rate for the same period in the U. S. is 3 per cent...

...nor can dollar aid alone cure this illness...

...What is at the bottom of this remarkable phenomenon is an absence of historical and personal perspective...

...It may be asked, however: what of the Marshall Plan and the billions poured into Western Europe...

...Unchanneled, uncontrolled and indeed uncontrollable, neutralism is a political emotion that can lead, on the one hand, to a catastrophic surrender before Stalinism or, on the other, to a revival of the center of Western civilization...

...not at all...

...The bulk of European intellectuals are either: a) nationalist, hoping to revive their defeated and depressed countries...

...They converge upon the common ground of questioning or opposing American leadership in Europe and throughout the world...

...it could imbue anti-Stalinism with a more progressive and dynamic content...

...But what has Europe left to yield?—S.P.] It says that the establishment of convertibility...

...a feeling that national and social maneuverability is a thing of the past...

...Particularly among the "pro-European" intellectuals is the "anti-Cold War" and "anti-Great Power" sentiment most powerful...

...I America acts, Europe reacts...

...But at the same time there is the segment of European neutralism which takes a vaguely socialist direction...

...but the basic problem remains...

...Dulles' readiness to make impromptu statements, has aggravated the problem...

...The report of the President's Randall Commission on trade and tariffs proposed some trifling reforms which would not have seriously changed the situation but which Congress, nonetheless, seems unwilling to accept...

...Because the European intellectuals do recognize the superiority of democracy over totalitarianism...

...neutralism reflects the despairing fear of all Europeans that this yearning may be beyond realization...

...The average yearly export surplus now runs to from four to five times that of 1939...

...The two least significant political groups tinged with, or exploiting, neutralism are the Communist Parties and the ruling European governments...

...Until now this shortage has been met by the economic and military aid programs, which have, incidentally, contributed very heavily to the extraordinary American prosperity of the past decade...

...The fact of the matter is, however, that European economic development is significantly frustrated by its subordinate position vis-a-vis the United States...

...Partly, this is the accumulated rot of fifty years of war and defeat, which cannot seriously be ascribed to American policy...

...This alone sharply limited the usefulness of the dollar transfusions...

...Nationalism and neutralism are themselves ideological products of the divisive forces which threaten the internal stability of European society, i.e., the growing pressure of overpopulation, the continuing proletarianization of the middle classes, the weakened state of organized religion...

...So long as the continent remains socially sick, neutralism will continue...

...Surely, the dominant emphasis cannot fruitfully be placed on strictly military projects at a time when the whole social foundation of the continent is Spring 1954 • DISSENT • 169 sinking...

...If Americans only troubled to understand this fact, 90 per cent of the moaning about European-American relations would immediately evaporate...

...in 1954 it rose to $4.5 billions...

...Neutralism is the most indigenous, the most spontaneous and the most important political mood in Europe...

...For the Stalinists, neutralism is obviously a fertile field: so long as they meet no significant challenge from the left they will continue to find it a fertile field...

...it could provide the only serious social bulwark against the Russian threat...

...True enough, during the past two years there has been a slight gain by Western Europe...

...given a certain vigor on the part of European socialism—a united Europe is possible...

...And if we glance for only a moment at the increasing discrepancy between American productivity and European, between American wealth and European, we come upon the first fact essential for an understanding of neutralism...

...b) Despite the billions of dollars, the level of West European living standards is still significantly below that of 1938-1939...

...11 Writing in the New Leader for March 30, 1953, Robert StrauszHupe declares: Psychologically, Europe may be diagnosed as suffering from an inferiority complex...

...Elliot Cohen, writing in Commentary two years ago, finds neutralism to be a disease peculiar to European intellectuals: Behind the "anti-Americanism" of Europe's intelligentsia, there is little ardor for Communism or the Soviet Union: the term "neutralism" fairly enough characterizes a state of mind that fails to see any difference worth mentioning, much less fighting for, between our "capitalist democracy" and Russia's "people's socialism...

...Neutralism speaks Spring 1954 • DISSENT • 165 of the profound yearning of all Europeans to achieve once more their former proud position of political and cultural independence...

...III Almost everything the Eisenhower administration has done, from its choice of a lady ambassador to Mr...

...In fact, the new American military policy—which may be described as strategic isolationism: a major reliance on long-range airpower, atomic and hydrogen bombs launched from North America or Eurasian peripheries —is calculated to evoke the worst fears among Europeans...

...Europe's extreme Right and Left are, paradoxically, nationalist and neutralist...

...and the strivings of those Europeans who recognize that the hope of the continent lies in economic unification and social planning should be actively encouraged...

...Not a political movement in the ordinary or traditional sense, neutralism cuts across all parties, infects all classes, colors all political ideologies...

...It is equally certain that neutralism must remain a shadowy, imprecise sentiment, unable or unwilling to cohere into a precise program, yet open 170 • DISSENT • Spring 1954 to the pressures and allures of almost every political program, all of which attract some support among the neutralists yet cannot, in the nature of things, achieve domination...