Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Criticizing Our Foreign Policy When the home-team pitcher is being hit hard and starts giving up bases on balls and throwing wild pitches,...
...Still another error was the failure to press more energetically for West German rearmament, which is even more necessary for political than for military reasons...
...There certainly have been grave errors in American foreign policy...
...First, he speaks of "a French policy which has insisted upon grossly over-extending the international commitments of the French nation...
...We must make concessions as well as demand them...
...Another critic of foreign policy is Harvard Professor Emeritus Ralph Barton Perry, who, during World War II, made a practice of writing verbose letters to the Times on current issues...
...The only point in which Britain's role as a United States ally is compromised by its Commonwealth obligations is in London's tendency to pay undue deference to Indian Prime Minister Nehru...
...Walter Lippmann, for instance, centers his fire on what he calls "three gross errors" of the State Department regarding France, Germany and Britain...
...While Nehru has taken action against Indian Communists, his record in opposing Chinese Communist imperialism is one of complete do-nothingism...
...Mao's forces could be in New Delhi before Nehru decided whether the real enemy is not the departed ghost of Western imperialism...
...We were wrong, too, in failing to accept the challenge of Red China's Korean invasion by hitting military targets in China with every weapon at our command...
...Was it the State Department or was it rather a succession of pitifully weak French cabinets, dependent on a negative-minded Parliament...
...By far the most serious was the double error of blindly trusting Soviet postwar intentions and failing to think in terms of Germany and Japan as necessary allies after the war...
...There is no evidence that Moscow was ever willing to relax its grip on the Soviet Zone, or consent to German reunification on terms that freedom-seeking Germans of whatever political faith could accept...
...At that time, the professor was a flaming crusader against totalitarianism, but his latest letter is couched in the familiar verbiage of camouflaged appeasement: We are "increasingly bitter and suspicious toward our opponents...
...Lippmann or Professor Perry was helpful in pointing this out when remedial action could have been taken...
...Indeed, quite the contrary...
...By all means let us have reasoned and informed criticism of mistakes, whether Acheson or Dulles was responsible...
...Finally, Lippmann sees a serious mistake in "failure to appreciate accurately what the Commonwealth means to the British...
...Here again, he directs his accusation to the wrong address...
...Another mistake, of which the Korean War and the Indo-Chinese crisis were inevitable consequences, was letting Nationalist China fall without more than a token effort to save it...
...But let us not go off on false trails or succumb, despite all recent experience, to the belief that appeasement can lead to anything but future war under the most unfavorable circumstances...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin Criticizing Our Foreign Policy When the home-team pitcher is being hit hard and starts giving up bases on balls and throwing wild pitches, pessimistic fans shout: "Take him out...
...It is only recently, under the shadow of impending military disaster, that the French Government has very hesitantly considered the advisability of "internationalizing" the war in Indo-China...
...It is a little hard to understand this...
...Perhaps France has been over-extended, but why blame this on the State Department...
...This is an entirely healthy tendency in a free country, provided that critics are prepared to offer positive alternatives for the policies to which they object...
...Lippmann also accuses the State Department of "failing to appreciate the paramount importance of German reunification over the so-called integration of a partitioned Germany in our Western military coalition...
...What has obstructed the obvious solution to this problem, the swift rearmament of a friendly, anti-Communist West Germany...
...It is fantastic to regard France as an adequate counter-balance to Soviet power in Europe...
...For very much the same psychological reason, there is a tendency to criticize incumbent officials and re-examine foreign policy when events abroad take an unfavorable turn...
...Some of the criticism that has been floating about since the situation in IndoChina began to deteriorate falls visibly short of this essential requirement...
...It is amazing that anyone could live in an ivory tower so remote from reality...
...There is "perpetual harping on the menace of Communism...
...Nearly all our troubles stem from this, but I do not recall that either Mr...
...But if we slow down the pace of our Far Eastern policy to that of Britain, and accept the proposition that Britain's policy must be in step with Nehru's, we might as well throw up the sponge in the Far East once and for all...
Vol. 37 • June 1954 • No. 24
