The United States: A Foreign Policy
Pachter, Henry
"New Frontiers" and "Leadership" will now replace the golf links and committee rule. Taking, for the while, at face value the claims of the new administration, I wish to present my own...
...In contrast to some writers on the left, I don't believe that recognizing China— which might have helped ten years ago—would make much of a difference now...
...Here, too, irrevocable conditions have been created and make it impossible to apply recipes which may have been helpful in the past...
...he cannot make the White Citizens' Councils acceptable in the United Nations, but he can restore respect for the U.S...
...But there is one phase of the arms race which does send shivers down my spine—the supply of obsolete material to underdeveloped nations...
...is today being accused of an indirect colonialism, notably in the Latin American republics...
...New Frontiers" and "Leadership" will now replace the golf links and committee rule...
...But to find that out, the nationalists must first get the experience of responsibility for their own economic affairs...
...The job consists largely in explaining and trading votes...
...A mistake from guessing wrongly is forgivable...
...I AM NOT AS ING the new President to make no blunders...
...The truth is that...
...To depose or reform them is the business of the nations concerned, not ours...
...I do not say that the underdeveloped countries need these dollars any less than before...
...I am tempted to say that it is not rational but emotional, and unless the American government can satisfy the new nationalism of the former colonial nations, it will not be dealing with them in terms they understand...
...Because of a series of technical difficulties which were beyond our control, this issue of DISSENT comes to you very late...
...The U.S...
...But the trend is irresistible, and the cure for the disease of nationalism is to allow these nations to make their own mistakes...
...We know that at least some of their notions are mistaken or even irrational...
...THIS LEADS TO THE THORNY question of recognition in general...
...The most revealing criticism of foreign aid I ever heard was the remark of an African delegate after Eisenhower's opening speech in the last General Assembly...
...We don't really know what the new nations mean by colonialism and anticolonialism...
...The U.S...
...Please accept our apologies—it has not happened before...
...The wages of American enterprise may be higher than in the native industries, but the profits are used by absentee owners to increase their power...
...Again, this can be learned better "by doing," or rather by trying to do, than from economic textbooks...
...POSTSCRIPT, New Year's Eve: Stevenson to U.N...
...We hope to recover this lost time with the prompt appearance of our next issue in April...
...The conventions which must be devised to protect the waterway may even afford the U.S...
...The world expects a "New Frontier" in race relations...
...firms in some Latin American countries...
...We are looking forward to a leadership that calmly steers toward a modus vivendi in regard to the world power struggle and does not have to rescue us from periodical crises...
...There is no valid reason why the Canal Zone should not be returned to Panama and the canal itself made over to a joint board of the American States...
...As history shows, it is often the rivalry of these small nations which brings the big nations into the fray...
...American investments may help the industrialization of underdeveloped countries, but the Cadillacs of American managers are visible to the naked eye...
...The President had offered the most generous aid and expressed his most sincere concern for the development of the new nations...
...Instead of unilaterally making gifts, we should be paying fairer prices to producers of imported food and materials...
...national management will not bring decisive improvements unless simultaneously the native economies are placed on a modern basis...
...We can, however, make a beginning with an act of renunciation...
...the best hope still is to integrate it into a European army, as Acheson had planned in his original European Defense Community scheme...
...A RELATED QUESTION concerns colonialism...
...That means to decide on which side the Government will stand...
...That dream being what it is, we might settle for a leadership which does not panic and can conduct foreign policy without having recourse to the marines, and for a leader that is not identified with all reactionary forces in the world and may yet be welcome in foreign lands...
...I do not speak of any agonizing reappraisal...
...Mr...
...but it may minimize the danger that such coups will find support in partisan warfare or that opposition to any unstable government in Asia or Africa automatically assumes a pro-Russian orientation in foreign politics...
...A President who exercises leadership must not be guided by the desires of the military but by the opportunities for diplomacy...
...Dictators are a feature of underdeveloped countries...
...It does not make sense for a nation to declare itself "neutral" and then to accept protection from another or make itself dependent upon weapons supplies from that nation...
...For both sides, the U.S...
...I suspect that many who would seek a Russian alliance against China are motivated by racialism...
...On the other hand, the advantage of opening contacts with a government which in some respect is the rival of Soviet power in Asia seems great enough to set aside considerations of prestige...
...Opportunistic evasion of the issues is unforgivable...
...where his halo might not wear off before the middle An Apology to Our Readers of the XVIth Assembly...
...Incidentally, what I am advocating is a return to an older American policy— using China to stop or embarrass the Russians who remain the first rival of both, the U.S...
...He will nevertheless strive for such an agreement in order to stop "fourth nations" from acquiring atomic bombs and to give Khrushchev an alibi for denying them to his allies...
...What we urgently need—more urgently even than an agreement to stop atomic tests—is a convention to neutralize all neutralists, i.e., to deny them war material which they cannot produce themselves...
...The worst mistake Liberals tend to be susceptible to is "retrospective utopianism"— wishing to fulfill yesterday's dreams with institutions no longer yesterday's hopes...
...There will be strife, provocation, even riots...
...If there was any merit in this consideration, it no longer applies...
...There was a time when the colonial revolutions might have been bought off with a few billion dollars of foreign aid...
...This will not remove the danger of Communist coups d'etat...
...He will strive to negotiate such standstill agreements with a tough and sober mind...
...The great myth which fosters the anti-Yankee demonstrations promises Paradise once the factories are nationalized...
...This may be painful, but it is not an agonizing decision...
...It is obvious that nationalist governments will need guidance and help in taking such responsibilities, and also that compensation for the expropriated companies must be negotiated...
...The only way to withhold atomic weapons from the German army—as a majority of Germans wish we would do—is to reserve their use for NATO...
...in many areas it is too late for that...
...But we should not dispose of other people's dishonestly earned property without proving our own willingness to overcome colonialism...
...This opportunity far outweighs the loss in dollars and it may well prevent a loss of face...
...CONTRARY to some friends on the left, I do not believe that our German position is negotiable any more...
...if that is not done, the policy becomes unrealistic...
...Since Khrushchev has us over a barrel in Berlin and can renew the pressure any time he pleases, the best way out would be to negotiate recognition of the (East) German Democratic Republic against Soviet recognition of West Berlin as part of the (Western) German Federal Republic, with ironclad guarantees for its survival...
...1 am particularly unconvinced by the assertion that China must be received in the United Nations now in order to sign a disarmament convention...
...The colored nations will watch with anxiety whether Kennedy gives the promised leadership...
...The same approach is a prerequisite for any agreement to stop atomic tests...
...and we hope it will not happen again.— THE EDITORS...
...That policy cannot be made in United Nations, for the simple reason that United Nations is not a Parliament and cannot now be re-converted to a destination it might have had 15 years ago...
...the agony has been consummated in the last ten years...
...Nitze received responsibility for Disarmament...
...Stevenson will be in a "policymaking position...
...I am asking him, however, to make no deliberate mistakes...
...We shall even have more rearmament, which looks less frightening at a second and calm glance than at the first shock...
...Whatever merit the criticisms of NATO, German rearmament and the common market may have had in the past, these decisions have been made and are irreversible...
...The issue is not economic, but political...
...An Ambassador, however, has the right to be listened to...
...no Ambassador is ever in that position, and that Mr...
...Wadsworth is not to be blamed for the mistakes of Air...
...he has a right to his share of mistakes...
...The question no longer is, whether to avoid them, but how to end them quickly...
...We must be ready to release some of our weaker retainers from their treaty obligations, provided they seek strength and protection in regional agreements of their own...
...foreign policy...
...What matters is that the dictator should represent not foreign interests but the interests of his country, and that the U.S...
...The U.S...
...I shall instead name a few questions which demand immediate answers...
...The charge of support for dictators will lose much of its sting once a withdrawal from colonialism is under way...
...as a nation...
...December 20, 1960...
...but propaganda is no substitute for a policy...
...But on this side we should be ready to receive such a concession with an open mind, and to view the possibilities of a standstill agreement not as a military calamity but as a political opportunity...
...government must deal with them—which is not to say, to sustain them—as long as they are in power, for it has undertaken not to intervene in internal affairs...
...in fact they need more...
...The threat of arming NATO with atomic weapons may be negotiable...
...There is some ironical justice in the isolationist gloating over the dollar crisis, but these gentlemen forget that foreign aid has been good business, too...
...Stevenson in particular is not, was made abundantly clear when Mr...
...All too long have our policy makers defended (or seemed to defend) positions whose value to particular interests hardly matched the national interests which had to be sacrificed in their defense...
...Why not propose an organized withdrawal while the loss still can be minimized...
...a refusal to gauge the temper of the time is unforgivable...
...Rostow as foreign economic adviser—it looks as though we were going to export the New Deal...
...The provocation which moves the White Citizens' Councils to violence no longer is the work of the Supreme Court alone...
...Herter, but he did not lose standing while he could claim innocence...
...We have experienced the consequences of uninhibited demagoguery in this area and we must expect more difficulties when patently immature nations (and every new nation when first entering the theater of world politics has been immature) presume to act like big powers...
...Stevenson a power which he does not have, Mr...
...The offense is threefold: the Panama Canal, the support of a few unsavory dictators, and the economic power of U.S...
...the Negro pop ulation no longer suffers silently...
...The aim of our foreign policy must be to insulate new nations sufficiently from the world conflict so that they can work out their domestic problems at leisure...
...The difficulty here is immense...
...this delegate, however, summed the speech up in a pithy sentence: "He did not say anything against colonialism...
...Note to Liberals: It was not a good idea to proclaim that Mr...
...By conceding to Mr...
...Sooner or later most of these investments will be nationalized, and each time the American government will be called upon to defend them— only to abandon them in the end...
...I am afraid that most of them still have to learn that the wealth of the foreign companies comes from the development of markets rather than from the ownership of real estate (which still is the image of wealth in semifeudal countries...
...We dare not punish any people (and that should apply to Santo Domingo as well as to Cuba) because we don't like its dictator...
...I doubt that disarmament is a real possibility in the near future...
...The direction of surplus funds to development areas should be planned by an independent international agency and the funds should be made available on economic rather than political grounds...
...We shall have more disarmament diplomacy, disarmament propaganda and even some unilateral disarmament (another name for the scrapping of obsolete material and the automatization of services...
...I am not even asking him to make no avoidable mistakes...
...some are leftist and others rightist in ideology, some are more and others less corrupt...
...The most important decision affecting the stature of the United States in the world is a domestic one...
...But I have always warned in these pages that foreign aid cannot be a substitute for a foreign policy...
...may lose prestige if and when it surrenders the canal under pressure...
...We have made enough for them in the past, and further tutelage will not keep them from wanting to imitate our mistakes...
...but by the same token, arguments against recognition have lost much of their force...
...The German army exists...
...The proper solution to the Chinese problem is to negotiate the independence of Taiwan against recognition of the People's Republic on the mainland...
...it may gain prestige by doing so of its own volition, under orderly procedures and under the necessary precautions...
...too much noise may create an even more adverse impression abroad...
...I shall not name those which the United States or its President are not free to decide by themselves, but only those on which a decision can be expected from the new President...
...the fact is we did not achieve this admitted aim, and as every hot war must end in a peace treaty, so sooner or later, the cold war over Germany must end with a document confirming the stalemate...
...Its reasoning was dominated by fear: too many Little Rocks may rock the boat...
...Taking, for the while, at face value the claims of the new administration, I wish to present my own bill as a simple voter, who is especially concerned with U.S...
...an opportunity to engage the sister republics in a common task...
...Kennedy in fact diminishes his usefulness...
...holding on to straws is unforgivable...
...and China...
...government's relations with a foreign government should not be dictated by the special interests of some U.S...
...government can lend its good offices...
...And at the same time we must strive to convince our colonialist allies that they cannot hold out for long and that if they try to, they risk losing our sympathy...
...he will not share the illusion that this is disarmament or that such an agreement will stop the Russians from making tests if they feel they need them...
...While I do not feel that recognition of China now would mean loss of face for the U.S., recognition of the Ulbricht regime in Eastern Germany amounts to acknowledging that we have lost the cold war...
...What we might have done to achieve unification of Germany is now a matter for historians...
...citizens but by the interests of the U.S...
...China is now so powerful she will not be controlled any more than the Soviet Union, and she will build her atomic power not one day later than her physicists and engineers learn how to do it...
...To remove these sources of anger may cause some inconvenience to interested parties, but we have to weigh the advantage to be gained against the disadvantage we may risk...
...Bowles in the largely administrative job of Undersecretary...
...if the Russians really want to prevent it they ought to make a concession on inspection...
...Galbraith to India...
...A deliberate mistake is one resulting from unproven and unchecked premises, from hide-bound prejudices and traditional attitudes...
...The previous administration has advanced equality among the races "with all deliberate speed" (where speed is used not in the sense of speeding-up, but as a neutral term covering the slow end of the speedometer...
Vol. 8 • January 1961 • No. 1
