A Look at Foreign Policy

...That is nonsense...

...Such a neutralization of Germany and the satellite states would mean that the USSR would be freed from its perennial fear of a renewed German aggression backed by NATO...

...What needs to be stressed here is that in every sphere the Russians are faced with the dangers of overextension, so that for the first time in many years they might regard the continuation of their rule in East Europe as a serious liability...

...This means not only to help secure , regimes which, as in Yugoslavia and Poland, it seriously distrusts but also to make distinct economic sacrifices involving a strain on the Russian economy...

...Here would seem to lie tremendous possibilities for an imaginative policy by European socialists...

...One may doubt that the ineffable Dulles is capable of utilizing them, or even that more than a very few Senate Democrats are capable of pushing in this direction...

...yet there is every reason for not merely dismissing it...

...If they cannot achieve this aim by constantly fanning the tensions and conflicts within the social and political arena, they may well be ready to settle for some sort of neutralization of the Middle East...

...Even temporarily to stabilize its relations with the satellite regimes, the Kremlin would have to extend them considerable economic aid...

...Hence, it would appear that for the time being the Russians are considerably more interested in keeping the Americans out of the Middle East than in themselves directly moving in...

...But in view of the Russian situation in East Europe, may one not at least entertain the idea that they are meant to be taken much more seriously...

...Russia is not in immediate need of oil...

...it needs a significant number of Russian divisions simply to keep these satellites in check...

...And it was most cautious in its statements on the Polish events till the day it became clear that the Gomulka regime would not take "rash action" against the Russians...

...The whole frantic activity of the State Department in recent weeks is allegedly legitimized by reference to the dangers of imminent Russian intervention...

...In fact it would seem probable that the Hungarian and Polish trauma has led the Russians to rethink the premises of their previous policy...

...Yet might not such neutralization be in the long-run interests of America...

...In the meantime, however, Russia, in its efforts to counter the "Eisenhower doctrine," has come up with a significant new proposal, made public by Dimitri Shepilov on February 12...

...Certain vital facts need to be recalled here...

...If the Soviet Union were now forced substantially to increase its economic aid to the satellites on top of a slowdown in economic growth at home, might not the Russian planners conclude that the danger of economic extension has become as real I00 as that of military overextension...

...now it would seem as if they might have to reduce their rate of accumulation simply to keep the satellites in hand...

...The Christian Science Monitor's special Vienna correspondent, Joseph C. Harsch, recently cabled: It would not be quite accurate to say that the Government of the United States supports the [Kadar] regime...

...Dulles, and as a result he seems to have become more bewildered than ever...

...The professional cold war propagandists may now be in for some technologi cal unemployment...

...and Africa know now that we walk with them as moral equals " Magnifi cent sentiments...

...Washington immediately responded by calling the Russian plan "propaganda," which in one sense it no doubt is...

...John Foster Dulles must have had similar feelings during the last few months as his whole array of "liberation" propaganda threatened to blow up in his face...

...American foreign policy seems constitutionally unable to deal with, or even take into account, any of the political elements in the Middle East that might conceivably represent trends of the future...

...Every djinn of the Middle East is now haunting Mr...

...Hudson seems to imply that some imperialist power need always bear the White Man's burden and that, since Britain has dropped it, America must necessarily pick it up...

...Yet the "new realism" in discarding talk of "liberation" does not amount to a new policy...

...But things have been righted, and the State Department is back to its old stand...

...But a policy implemented daily here in Vienna by advice sent across to the remaining patriots to refrain from another rising is, in its ultimate effect, the same thing as a policy of support...

...Neither Russia nor America would feel at all sympathetic to it, yet precisely their mutual antagonism might make it possible...

...Here would be an occasion to compete with the Russians peacefully, that is, not in terms of tanks and bombers but with irrigation schemes and agricultural improvements...

...The final article, by one of our editors, initiates a discussion of the problem of "National Communism...

...It must now have become apparent to the Kremlin that militarily they are in a far more vulnerable position in Europe than they had supposed...

...It has been a traditional tenet of socialist politics to oppose any military or political domination of one nation by another, to oppose any imposition of the will of imperialist nations upon dependent areas...

...The demand for the withdrawal of Russian as well as American troops from continental Europe is thus clearly in accord with socialist tradition...

...The poems, taken from the Polish writers' newspaper, show how deeply the Hungarian revolution affected the intellectuals of Poland...

...It is this possibility that offers new openings for American foreign policy...

...In the following section we print reports and analyses of these great events, continuing the discussion begun in earlier issues of DISSENT...

...Not only cannot the Kremlin rely on the armed forces of the satellites...

...Punch recently published a cartoon that shows three frightened little men storming into a launching station for guided missiles and shouting, "It's coming back...

...This would put the Russians back to the borders of the Soviet Union and would mean a withdrawal of American forces behind the Channel coast and the Spanish border...

...The problems created by such withdrawals are tremendously complex, yet in view of the present difficulties of the Russians the possibility of such a policy can no longer be considered utopian...

...Crusades always tend to have catastrophic consequences, but worst of all crusades with a synthetic cross...

...It might allow the Arab countries to jump from the 15th to the 20th century...

...But his immediate description of the situation is exact...

...Since the events in Poland and Hungary it has become clear that American foreign policy, far from being geared to the liberation of the satellites, is in fact committed to a tacit agreement with the Russians not to upset the unstable equilibrium that has slowly been established between the two remaining world powers...

...This six point program proposes: noninterference in the internal affairs of the Middle East by East and West alike, elimination of all foreign bases, agreement not to deliver arms to the countries of the Middle East, rejection of attempts to involve these countries in military blocs and economic aid "without any political, military and other conditions...

...And yet it now is at least conceivable that Washington and Moscow, moved purely by power considerations, might achieve a modus vivendi which would allow the emergence of new political forces in a Europe at least partly free from Russian and American military pressures...

...Nixon's eloquence after hearing that the United States has just lined up with Mollet in his "pacification" of Algeria...

...As Hans J. Morgenthau has written: The events of the fall of 1956 have opened up a gap between our verbal commitment to a policy of liberation and the actual policy we pursued when the opportunity, not to initiate liberation, but to support it after it had already been achieved, arose in Hungary...

...Peter Fryer's report on the Hungarian revolution is one of the most valuable firsthand accounts of that great event, particularly in that it communicates a sense of the democratic nature of the revolution without blinking the violence that so frequently accompanies the outburst of long-repressed popular sentiments...

...It would liberate tremendous social and cultural forces now suppressed by the Arab rulers...

...By opposing the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt, America seemed purged of the accusation of supporting colonialism...

...Now such neutralization will clearly not be desirable for Pentagon planners in search of new military bases, nor for oil interests in search of further guarantees for the secure exploitation of Arabia's and Persia's fabulous reI03 sources...

...If recent events will lead to some reduction-in-force at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, so much the better...

...That there are already serious economic difficulties in Russia was revealed the other day when the new Soviet economic boss Peruvkhin declared that planned economic goals had been drastically pared down for the current year and that as against an eleven per cent gain in industrial output last year, a gain of only seven per cent is projected for this year...

...During the past decade the Russians exploited the satellites in order to increase their rate of accumulation...

...If Kadar survives and consolidates his position, his success will be due to that strange combination of Soviet power and Western acquiescence which is the inevitable result when Washington, London, and Paris prefer things as they are, no matter how bad, to things as they would be if the Hungarians were to attempt a second rising, or if the people of any other satellite country were to follow the Hungarian example...

...Central to this scheme were the following items: 1) the reduction by one-third of the armed forces of the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France in Germany...

...May not these proposals be considered as feelers raising the possibility that the Russians can be induced to accept a staged withdrawal of Russian and U.S...

...II "With the withdrawal from Port Said," writes G. F. Hudson in the London Twentieth Century (January 1957), "Britain ceases to be a great power in the Middle East, but by the same event America has become the heir to all the troubles of the world between Bab el Mandeb and Kirkuk...

...THE POLITICAL difficulties that beset the Russians in regard to the satellites have already been discussed in these pages...

...In fact, as Alvin Cottrell and Walter F. Hahn have argued in a brilliant article in the New Leader for January 21, 1957, "The Red Army cannot withdraw unilaterally without losing face [in East Germany] . .. On the other hand, it cannot remain there indefinitely without committing the cardinal military sin of overextension...

...The Russians are in trouble at home, they do not immediately need oil, they seem to lack the resources for any large scale aid to the underdeveloped countries at the moment— note their thunderous silence, as the London Economist recently called it, on the Aswan dam project...

...But the Russian difficulties in East Europe are not simply military...

...Experience and observation suggest that they will take the opposite course...

...The United States, far from seeking out or creating opportunities for opening the door to liberation, has proven to be unwilling even to enter the door when a satellite nation kicks it wide open...

...Ibn Saud must surely have been privately amused at some of the speeches made in Washington praising the Saudi Arabian nation—for he knows that he does not represent a nation but merely exploits a territory and its subsoil...

...As if drawn by an inherent tropism, American policy is again engaged in shoring up the most reactionary forces in the Middle East...

...Considering his political predispositions, his testimony is particularly valuable...

...Every djinn of the Thousand and One Nights has now gone to make its home in Washington...

...Commentary, February, 1957) Thus, the State Department effectively stultified any effort in the U.N...

...We cannot afford to lose it to the Russians...

...Such a Europe could very well be socialist in its economy and democratic in its political structure...

...The Americans have been victorious and they must bear the consequences of that, too...

...During the Suez crisis America adopted the stance of the "only moral nation," the staunch champion of national self-determination, peaceful solution of disputes, etc...

...February 6, 1957) Things will be less ambiguous now that the "liberation" propaganda has finally been exposed as the sham it was...

...But is there any real danger of the Russians actually moving into the Middle East in the immediate future...

...to exert effective pressure on the Russians in the days when their tanks were crushing the Hungarian revolution...

...No matter what immediate strategy they may have decided upon, it must have become apparent to them that the satellites, far from being springboards for further advance toward the West, are in fact exposed pathways to the East...

...On the other hand Russia would, in exchange for guarantees of its security, renounce its dominion over the satellites— without "losing face...

...The medieval djinns now haunting Mr...

...3) the establishment of an aerial inspection system reaching roughly 500 miles in depth from the borders between West and East Germany...

...The West, so the argument runs, needs Middle Eastern oil, which is a life-blood for West European economies—and the American oil companies...

...ALTHOUGH order appears to have been reestablished in eastern Europe, it would be foolish to discount the profound impression that the Hungarian and Polish events must have made upon the Kremlin...

...There never has been any official avowal of support for it...

...troops to a region roughly 500 miles from the east-west border of Germany...

...And in this connection a glance at the Russian position in Europe should be useful...

...But American foreign policy is also presented with new opportunities...

...The Russian disarmament scheme announced on November 17, 1956, in the midst of the Hungarian and Middle East crisis, has not yet received adequate attention...

...And this unmasking of ideological pretenses seems to me not at all unwelcome...

...It would mean buying time, relaxing the tensions that threaten the peace of the world, giving some of the peoples in central Europe and the Middle East a chance to shape their own lives...

...Dulles might be replaced by modern ones...

...It merely Ieaves the weakness of the old status quo policy all the more exposed...

...Its aim has been not so much to gain control over Middle Eastern oil, but rather to foster antagonism to the West among the Arab countries, so as to make Western access to this oil more difficult...

...That the present Washington elite will act along the lines here suggested, is most unlikely...

...First, that thanks to the exploitation of the "Second Baku" fields in the Urals, Soviet oil production has been rising rapidly, reaching 83 million tons last year...

...Still, for a few weeks during the Suez crisis the United States did find itself in a somewhat unusual position, so much so that writers like Reinhold Niebuhr began to express fears that Americans might succumb to the un-Christian plague of "national pacifism...

...March 1, 1957 LEwis COSER The struggle for freedom in eastern Europe remains one of the most stirring facts of our time...

...Some recent Russian proposals might even provide the United States with opportunities for initiating such a new policy...

...These proposals were received in Washington with the usual scepticism and considered simply new moves in the propaganda war...

...But we now enter a period where this old socialist demand seems to coincide with immediate realistic possibilities...

...but apart from those cynics who would raise the spectre of Hungary, one can readily imagine an Indian who might be pardoned a certain reserve in regard to Mr...

...2) a considerable reduction of Russian, American, French and English troops in NATO and Warsaw Pact territories...

...Vice President Nixon, always sensitive to a good pitch (also known in the trade as a "soft sell") rushed in to declare that "The United States has met the test of history...

...Fryer was the Budapest correspondent of the London Daily Worker but broke from the paper when it failed to print his dispatches...

...But is it really asking too much of the liberals, the ADA and the labor movement to fight hard for such a program, in opposition to the "Eisenhower doctrine" for the Middle East...

...Russian aims were best suited not by a war that might settle matters once and for all, but by an increase in Middle Eastern tension and instability...

...it instinctively turns to the most corrupt Arab rulers...

...One might therefore ask whether a possible basis for a genuinely new departure has not begun to emerge in the recent period...

...It is the point that we have italicized which is most important and, again, offers new possibilities for foreign policy...

...An International Development scheme for the Middle East in which America would inevitably assume a major role would in a relatively short time have revolutionary consequences for the whole economic, social and political structure of the Arab countries...

...Second, Russian arms have indeed been shipped to Egypt and Syria, but it is most doubtful that these were ever intended to lead to the creation of "Popular Democracies...

...The rule of law has been upheld—the same law for the powerful and strong as for the weak and defenseless The peoples of Asia...

...The article by L. Labedz provides background material on the Polish situation, and is printed here by arrangement with Soviet Survey...

...It would eventually mean the establishment within Europe of a wide neutral belt including the satellites as well as a united Germany...

...If ten Soviet divisions were needed to crush the 9 million people of Hungary, how many of the 27 divisions in East Germany, with its population of 17 million, would be required to stamp out a rebellion there...