Editorial
EDITORIAL The New Isolationism American isolationism is back in business. Bellicose declarations have replaced the pacifist slogans of the 1930s, but it is isolationism just the same. Its...
...It was fathered by President Roosevelt, reared and nourished by such Republicans as Arthur Vandenberg, Harold Stassen, John Foster Dulles and Warren Austin...
...If he fails to do this, there is only one interpretation that can be placed on his proposal: It is the opening gun of a campaign to withdraw America from the international scene, sever our "entangling alliances" and rely on technology and the two oceans to protect us...
...We believe the Korean armistice was a disaster and that it has been violated with impunity by the Communists for too long...
...Here are four reasons why: 1. The UN is an American creation...
...out of the UN...
...Against this background, Senator Knowland's latest proposal stands out clearly as irresponsible...
...we oppose it now...
...Not unless they submerged their policies to Washington's inconstant course...
...It is interesting to speculate what Senator Knowland would have us do after pulling this coup...
...It would also be an invitation to the Kremlin to turn the UN into a Communist front...
...retreat from the global struggle...
...Rightly or wrongly, it was created in the belief that not only differing, but hostile, views would find expression there...
...The New Leader has never favored the admission of the Communist Chinese to the UN...
...Would he have us intervene to save Indo-China...
...he led his party in the Senate in support of a three-division cut in the Army...
...But we also think the presence of the Kremlin's agents an affront to international decency...
...he is a firm supporter of the Eisenhower truce...
...Senator Knowland's actions in the last six months have made that amply clear...
...To say we oppose it under all conceivable conditions is to make horse-trading difficult, just as the strings Senator Knowland places on the commitment of American soldiers makes resistance difficult...
...For the United States to withdraw from the UN now would mean we only accept majority decisions when we make them...
...In such horsetrading, the UN seat for Peking is one of the few commodities the West has to offer...
...If the Administration now repudiates both liberation and containment, the only peaceful course left is to press for the best conditions of "coexistence" which the West can obtain...
...What would Senator Knowland have us do...
...This is isolationism pure and simple...
...We believe strengthening, not weakening, of our ground forces is required by the present emergency, which also calls for more, rather than less, economic and military assistance to our democratic allies...
...Knowland said that, if a majority of the United Nations voted to seat Communist China, he would lead a campaign to take the U.S...
...For the United States to withdraw from the UN would, under any circumstances, be a confession of political failure second to none...
...Would he work to strengthen the forces of our allies...
...If this is intolerable to Senator Knowland—as it is to us—let him fight for some of the realistic anti-Communist measures we have outlined...
...Would he have us expand our armies to prepare for future local emergencies...
...But neither does Soviet Russia, which masterminded and supplied the Korean aggression from start to finish...
...Senator Knowland's proposal thus helps divide the Atlantic alliance...
...at the very height of the Dienbienphu crisis, he sounded off against sending "a single American boy" to fight there...
...4. Since Senator Knowland is unwilling to fight Communism with more than paper—since he supports the truce in Korea, the hands-off policy in Indo-China, and the weakening of our armies and our allies—he provides those allies with no alternative to their policy of horsetrading with the Communists in the hope of inducing at least a temporary cold-war stalemate...
...3. We agree with Senator Knowland that Communist China has no moral right in the UN, considering its aggression against UN forces...
...Its strongest blow was struck last week by William F. Knowland, nominally President Eisenhower's Senate leader...
...We have long favored internationalization of the IndoChina struggle, with the commitment of U.S...
...To attempt to cover this failure with cry-baby stunts over Peking's UN seat is sheer cant...
...It is hard to escape the conclusion that he really desires a U.S...
...2. The UN was never designed to be an American front organization...
...troops if necessary to the struggle for Indo-Chinese independence...
...Since Senator Knowland has never urged the expulsion of Vishinsky, the moral basis of his objection to Chou En-lai is somewhat shaky...
...Would he have us go it alone to unify Korea...
...The Administration for which Senator Knowland supposedly speaks has demonstrated by its actions that it thinks otherwise on all these points—i.e., that it is unwilling to lead an all-out resistance to Communism...
...Unless and until we provide an alternative by leading a real resistance, our allies will deal with the Kremlin whether we like it or not...
Vol. 37 • July 1954 • No. 28
