FOREIGN POLICY-A DISCUSSION: A BEWILDERING DEBATE

...This meeting is to be held because the Russians wanted it to be held...

...socialists in Asia would have wondered whether American socialists were using the American government as a 'front or were so used by it...

...In open conference questions of prestige stifle all good intentions to try a rapprochement...

...One reason, patently, is that the Russians demanded it immediately after launching their sputnik and scuttling the UN Disarmament Committee...

...In the atomic age, the question is legitimate: Would fulfillment of national aspirations everywhere strengthen world peace or complicate its maintenance...

...Their peace ly repudiates the savior ideology that of mind, however, has nothing to do has been built on some of his sugges- with the preservation of peace, which tions...

...In spite of this discrepancy, believers can wax quite indignant when critics question the realism of the mythical plan...

...The internationalist Left stood for American involvement in the defense of freedom everywhere...

...Richly embellished in the imagination of the masses, his epochal radio talks were received like a new Gospel of Peace and Kennan's "assurances" were the single spark that fired the fervent demand for a Conference...

...They are preserving peace by means of a suspended suicide pact, and little can be said for the perverse grandeur of this system of divided world government except that it seems to be fitting for the atomic age...

...yet their suggestiveness is enhanced by two factors of political psychology...

...If Even harder to understand is the collateral myth which styled Kennan a spokesman of the Left...

...We have chosen Peace over other values which we cherished in the golden age when the choice was ours...

...The withdrawal idea covers conceptions of quite different significance...

...Why should anybody give up such valuable property...

...instead of being driven to the slaughter, pacifists learned to resist evil...

...in this category are most of the "twelve points" recently published in The Nation, ranging from a demand that passports should be granted for travel anywhere, to the incontrovertible argument that we should recognize all existing governments...

...Even George Kennan, who was soon to become the hero of the Summit myth, warned the Western powers not to participate in any conference that had not been thoroughly prepared through diplomatic channels...

...at other times they condemned all wars no matter how good their cause might have been...

...Now practical pacifism is developing in a new direction...

...As their continent is being spiked with missile bases, Europeans naturally stall before they Iet themselves be pushed beyond the point of no return...

...Breathing the fire of "liberation," he has created an artful smoke screen under which he has maneuvered for disengagement...

...In Hungary, in Suez, in Germany the two Metternich disciples have co-operated to maintain the status quo, and above the din of popular clamor for a conference they have developed a curiously artful technique of negotiating-whilenottalking-to-each other...

...We must look at the peace plan implied in these words...

...but what he really wants is an assurance from the United States that no American arms will be used to liberate "his" Germans...

...Men of good faith —pacifists, socialists and other leftists who ordinarily would not allow their dog to take a bone from Eisenhower or Khrushchev—naively believe that a get-together of these two chums might transform a power contest into a human relationship...

...To IV mistake outlawry for collective security It is noteworthy that in all these deis a grave error and (as Salvador da bates conservatives have occupied more Madariaga pointed out after serving radical positions than the radicals...

...not the Russians but the Americans would have been indicted and condemned in United Nations...

...Socialists tend to clear their conscience by pointing to Dulles' grave mistake in November, 1956: had he then offered the Russians Kennan's plan of mutual withdrawal, they might have accepted it as a face-saving way out of their plight...

...His idea of the Summit Conference was that it should legalize the status quo...

...A fortiori, to outlaw the greatest horror, atomic poisoning, will be a popular desire, as irresistible in the long run as it is legitimate...

...deceitfully staging Crusades against Bolshevism, he has always respected the interests of the Soviet state...

...an experienced diplomat, he favors secret negotiations...

...nor did he deplore with them the "strings" often attached to our overmilitarized aid projects...

...On the contrary, he seemed to say: If we must spend money, let the recipients be our friends...

...Admittedly none of these proposals does away with the real causes of conflict and Kennan even points out that his suggestions are designed to intensify other forms of the power contest in other areas...

...Ignoring the lessons of Kadar and Grotewohl, he asserts that Europe is protected not by the presence of American "trip-wire" divisions but by the absence of Quislings— as though Duclos and Togliatti were not ready to serve...

...They deny mising that the new equilibrium will collective security and are interested be more comfortable, and less "corn- in their own salvation rather than in petitive" than the old one, he certain- the survival of mankind...

...They expect to be given some visible proof of "negotiations in good faith," for sad experiences have not disproved the adage that "they don't shoot while they are talking...

...They accepted shameful alliances and cooperate with their enemies...

...Moreover, by insistently demanding that the govern...

...They would rather have a tete-a-tete with the United 106 States than deal with so many negligible nations...

...Scientists join them in declaring that time is running out, that megaton tests must be stopped to prevent an irremediable poisoning of the air we breathe and of the food we eat...

...Contrary to the illusions of some socialdemocratic speakers, Khrushchev is not annoyed with the Poles and Hungarians to the point of yielding them up to "capitalist exploitation," and he still thinks that rebellious Poles under a Soviet government are better lu than hostile Poles in an independent government...

...We all are used to thinking in visual images, and looking at a map we feel reassured by the sight of a neutralized or atom-free zone which seems to separate the adversaries physically...

...Working feverishly to redefine positions which they had assumed for propaganda purposes, diplomats prepare formulas to end the cold war which they know the other side will reject...

...In contrast to any business meeting, where the parties anticipate the limits of agreement, this Summit Conference has no meeting ground, no terms of reference and hardly any negotiable objects...

...On warned more earnestly against such the Left I know of only one group of notions than Kennan...

...even a minor form of disengagement such as the Rapacki Plan seems to offer—that feeble straw of hope that their country might be spared the disgrace of becoming a Iaunching base—must look attractive to people madly in fear that they are losing their freedom of action...

...Nevertheless, it is precisely public opinion in the Western countries which has become impatient of waiting, and now forces the powers to stage an "exercise of peace...

...In fact, at the decisive moment, when the fate of Budapest on the one hand and of Nasser on the other was decided, we were with Dulles and Khrushchev, and we cannot live down the shame of that day...

...Another myth, of more recent origin, has found its prophet in the martyred George Kennan...

...The prospect appalled even the most inveterate critics of Foster Dulles...

...Another example—leftist internation104 alism unanimously sponsors foreign aid programs...

...but it has opposed to it nothing but a bundle of suggestions from an earlier age...

...To be morally right is no substitute for a foreign policy, whether the righteousness is that of John Foster Dulles or C. Wright Mills...

...Any trained diplomat will exploit such kibitzing to raise his ante, and his opponent then has the choice of either making an iIlconsidered concession or stiffening into an unyielding attitude which earns him the reputation of inflexibility, or worse...

...Moreover, he intends to use his is a practical question...

...ment prove its love of peace, the opposition in democratic countries often indicates to the other side how to get its prize cheaper...

...Any plan promising "disengagement" will be seized upon eagerly...

...Likewise, the piddling cure-alls smuggle into the baggage of a diplo- which some radicals have used to mat under the guise of helpful advice tranquilize their conscience (unite on winning friends among the neutral Germany and breathe, create neutral nations...

...Meanwhile the peoples all the world over hopefully responded to the beck103 oning banns and to the summons for a ritual of "peaceful exercises...

...They are caught in the same shameful peace with everybody else— and not only must they defend it, they even must understand the use of power in defending this kind of peace...

...Some socialists now continue to ask Dulles daily to do in 1958 what he should have done in 1956—it's like Lady Macbeth washing her hands...

...Even if some form of evacuation could be agreed upon, it would be conditioned upon the right of Russia's armies to return in force whereto in 1956 they only came in violation of law and treaty...

...big wars start either from brushfire wars (and, Dr...

...Foreign Policy—A Discussion .. . We present on this page, and on Page 110, two approaches (or attitudes, as distinct from programs) to foreign policy...

...1 Inevitably the world is heading toward another "summit" conference...

...Prima facie, it is hard to understand why...

...To follow up would have meant to coerce, to threaten, to be ready to send supplies and even to protect them...

...no inspection even now can control any longer their manufacture...

...Unlike his radical followers, he did not recommend a United Nations fund for international development...

...it sought martyrdom through defiance of State and Society...

...No "Summit Conference" was required to liquidate the Berlin blockade, the Korean war and the Suez adventure...

...Why not outlaw war...

...Honestly, would the unification of Germany increase or decrease tension on the Polish border...

...But the victims no longer can choose their martyrdom...

...Kissinger nothwithstanding, tactical bombs are of the same kind as megaton bombs), or because the big powers deny each other an area which has no master...

...The charge of American intervention could have been substantiated...

...A second batch of suggestions answers the qualms of our own conscience rather than the tribulations of power poIitics...

...It might prevent a further have endangered the existing "inflexiincrease of the tensions, but would bie" balance of peace without creating not be designed to decrease them...

...Confident that under the circumstances the State Department would furnish a perplexed world a new proof of its reputed inflexibility, they asked for a conference which was to listen to their terms of surrender...

...seal on the birth certificates of all "democratic people's republics," neither Hungary nor, possibly, Eastern Germany or Poland should give the United Nations any more cause for indignation...

...In his crude way, Krushchev made this point when he said in London: "You keep your Germans, we'll watch ours...

...Stated more specifically liberal, labor, pacifist and socialist opinion accuses the conservative governments in the West of bogging down in the impasse of stubborn, military thinking...

...109...

...government should recognize de jure what Russian arms had conquered de facto...

...bier) than the hysterical demand to The question is peace, indivisible "ban" the bomb while leaving the and multilateral peace, which unfor- blueprints in the hands of the militunately no piecemeal approach can tary...

...An almost archetypal myth depicts Napoleon and Alexander peacefully meeting on a raft to divide the world—though what followed was not "peaceful co-existence" but the abominable Peace of Tilsit and the invasion of Russia...

...and Roosevelt wrote letters to the Mikado up to the minute of Pearl Harbor...

...to achieve success, negotiations should not be conducted under pres...

...Kennan did not attack the niggardliness of their execution or the misappropriation of their resources, but the underlying Liberalism of opinion: that rich countries must share the responsibility for the welfare of their underdeveloped neighbors...

...To control of total disarmament and a offer them as a medicine against the profound understanding of collective conflict is either ignorance or an at- security and of the conditions under tempt to kid oneself...

...They get credit for what appears popularly to be a peaceful exercise...

...sure of time and of public opinion...

...Had we been courageous enough then and there to follow up and daily to increase the pressure, perhaps Hungary and Poland would have regained their independence and Tito might have returned to the Western camp...

...ten years on the old League of Nations The Baruch Plan, offering to place disarmament commission) likely to con- all atomic facilities under an internafuse the issues and to divert attention tional authority, certainly was more from the overriding objective—which revolutionary (and, incidentally, noof course is peace...

...In return, Russia would keep her hands off Africa and the Middle East...

...Likewise, the socialist mayor of Berlin has been praised for, and indeed owes his job to, his courageous intervention to prevent Berlin workers from marching into the Eastern sector and carrying the revolution into the occupied zone...

...But the Russians withdrew, not their troops, but their offer to withdraw...

...sooner or later the powers must come to some agreements, possibly through the new International Agency for Atomic Energy, to stop the tests and to regulate the manufacture of weapons grade fission products...

...Exasperated by the freewheeling speculations about that ever-lengthening extra mile to meet the other side, one Israeli diplomat recently complained that no poker player would sit down at a table under conditions the free press was imposing on him...

...To top this comedy of errors, Kennan made mincemeat of Wilson's gospel of "open covenants openly arrived at...

...To In the atomic age, peace goes beachieve a true new balance, the West fore conscience and even before justice...

...A third group of proposals which has great appeal to common sense, indeed, derives from the ancient concept of outlawry...

...A clear answer to this question is harder to get than an intelligent one...

...In those same lectures which made him its authority on foreign affairs, Kennan has repudiated all the slogans which, since Woodrow Wilson, have been considered hallmarks of Democracy...

...He considers people who could be called radicals...

...Its real estate in Central Europe serves the double purpose of a glacis against attacks from the West and of a stopper to keep the satellite empire bottled up...

...The old notion that weapons are the cause of war and that 105 an arms race must end in war (which was partly correct in the last century) has retained its imagist strength far beyond the circle of pacifists and socialists, particularly in Europe...

...a foundation for a new one...

...All nations, but especially the U.S...

...Kennan preaches "disengagement" not only militarily but politically, too...

...Readers are invited to participate in the discussion, whether in criticism of the views presented here, or independent of them...

...Trying to place on the agenda items which most embarrass the opponent, each refuses to discuss the other's demands...

...Statesmen look forward in horror to the day which is not far, when more and more nations will own atomic bombs...

...Nor can I suppress the question: Shall Nasser's agents be allowed to murder socialists because the French officers who murdered Tunisians are of the same color as Norman Thomas...

...Once its virtue was to refuse all co-operation with any government...

...Moreover, the Poles and the French socialists agree with him that divided Germans are better than neutralized Germans whose future designs are as uncontrollable as their armament...

...they must achieve this par107 ticularly in view of the increasing should get some equivalent for disdanger that small countries will ac- banding NATO...

...If no comprehensive quire atomic weapons...

...Worse —like Stassen and Dulles he does not suggest anything the Russians had not previously dubbed "unacceptable...

...proposals to haggle stubbornly...

...the present price for a Russian retreat from the Elbe, however, is abandonment of all American bases overseas and evacuation of all armies from all foreign soil (excluding, of course, Lithuania, Esthonia, East Poland, Karelia, Bessarabia and the Russian possessions in Asia...

...Some of them are nothing but helpful advice to keep a Secretary of State from making a fool of himself...

...This led to the second, and seemingly very democratic, boost for the idea of a Conference —the frightened peoples of Western Europe and Asia, naturally yearning for safety and disregarding their governments' pleas for watchful calmness, agreed to listen with more enthusiasm than anybody had expected...

...The diplomats will use these zones and relax, recognize China and and similar ideas—banning the bomb, feel good) only can evoke pitying forbidding the tests, thinning out the smiles from the professional negotiators forces, creating neutral or atom-free whose ten-year-long labors have prozones— as so many bargaining points duced comprehensive plans for mutual in their game of power politics...

...Far from pro- more than for Danzig...

...Dulles understands Tovarich Khrushchev and has signalled to him through unmistakable actions that he accepts this definition of co-existence—provided only that he does not have to say so...

...Such an agree- settlement can be reached, more points ment, however, would mean accep- of friction might be exposed than betance of the Dulles-Khrushchev system fore, and the "flexible" policies may of duopoly...

...For a day indeed, they seemed to be pressed so hard by world opinion that they themselves suggested something of the kind...

...only would help divided countries to unite and subjected nations to liberate themselves...

...This type of thinking ignores a fact which every chess player knows: one constantly fights for the points which are not occupied by either party...

...With the U.S...

...But did they admit it to themselves as clearly as Leon Blum recognized his "ldche soulagement" (craven relief) after Munich...

...But did recognizing Mao help the British...

...Ever since Stalin offered this deal to Truman at the Potsdam Conference, Russians of both the pre- and post-Thaw schools have been yearning to persuade us that "peaceful co-existence" could be had at this price...

...Radicals once supported revolutionary wars and wars of liberation...

...Dulles does not yet mean having a peace plan, not to speak of peace itself...

...Those who realize that the present armament race already has resulted in a stalemate are, in turn, searching for means of institutionalizing or confining the stalemate to circumscribed areas...

...they would rather see the United States mount the watch on the Elbe, and be stuck there, then allow it some real disengagement under cover of a system of alliances and a fluid status quo...

...Incidentally, the German Socialist Party's expert on disarmament, who favors withdrawal, and Adenauer's foreign minister Brentano who fears it, both emphatically reject the Kennan-Bevan assumption that a neutralized Germany can be kept unarmed...

...Obviously, to be more reasonable than Mir...

...III The Left has justly attacked the cruelty and ultimate futility of the balance of terror...

...108 Most socialists instinctively but tacitly admitted that much during the Hungarian crisis...

...Kennan is silent on those overseas bases which are the Kremlin's nightmare...

...but it was from Munich that Neville Chamberlain brought "peace in our time," followed by the rape of Czechoslovakia and the invasion of Poland...

...E.g., his interim proposal •for mutual withdrawal would leave the American army in Europe...

...In fact, the operating mode of an open conference is productive only of face-saving devices and sham agreements...

...Contrary to its propaganda behavior, Soviet diplomacy considers disengagement and round-table conferences as just pawn ideas in a much bigger game...

...Joseph Harsch, heretofore an advocate of "negotiations in good faith," called the conference craze "the clearest example of Moscow's capacity to manipulate Western opinion against the wishes of Western governments so long as these governments remain less competent in [propaganda] than the Kremlin...

...professional negotiators fear the pressure of public opinion to bring home from the conference table some make-believe success...

...Why, then, does it take place...

...and no one has which peace can be maintained...

...Space allowing, we will make every effort to print any reasoned statement.—THE EDITORS...

...Oddly enough, Mr...

...Of course, Khrushchev would like to keep atomic missiles out of Germany...

...They agree to freeze the tensions rather than to disentangle anything and to take chances...

...These necessary requirements are not even minimum peace proposals...

...even disengagement, which he advo- they are the unconditional pacifists, cates, as nothing more than a means unilateralists and defeatists who don't of adjustment to the changes in an want people to die for Berlin any existing equilibrium...

...For reasons that must astonish no one more than himself, his brilliant mind is credited with the immaculate conception of a new "Plan" which will settle the cold war...

...A careful reading of Kennan's book reveals no proposals which others—Walter Lippmann, Kurt Schumacher, Aneu rin Bevan and Marshall Tito, to name just a few—had not offered at a time when Kennan himself still preached "containment" and negotiated the NATO treaties which now seem to stand in the way of his solution...

...must be the first reaction of anyone whom war ever struck as immoral...

...All would be well, we are told, if the U.S...