The Case for Coexistence:

...The danger is that Asian people may exchange the authoritarianism of the old agrarian feudal order for the totalitarianism of Communism, without knowing what a price in liberty has been paid...

...The question is whether we ought to disavow the policy of coexistence because the phrase has been corrupted by our foes...

...Every illusion in regard to our foe is as dangerous to our survival as heedlessness...

...He may be prompted at this time not by illusions but by the final virtue of statesmanship--which is prudence...

...It has enabled the Communists to exploit the rising nationalist forces for their own ends...

...If it does, all our theories about the illegitimacy of a tyranny and the legitimacy of a free government would be refuted...

...He might have added that it does not involve toleration of any of the evils of Communism...

...It is a primary need in the present situation that we preserve our moral and political prestige as leader of the alliance of the free nations...

...We do not, of course, disavow democracy merely because this neighbor calls his tyranny "democracy...

...There is no reason to suppose that the malignancy of Communism will become less...

...We must also take into account that France would rather be defensively allied with Britain than with Germany...

...Perhaps that is not a problem which semantics can illumine after all...

...Lester Pearson, the Canadian Foreign Secretary, recently said some realistic words about coexistence which might dispel much confusion...

...The best we can do is to hold our ground until we can prove the democratic case, and until the full flavor of modern, technically-equipped tyranny disillusions the illusionists among the Asians...

...That is more important than to seek to prove in every instance the resoluteness of our anti-Communism, though that resoluteness is necessary...

...Our chief difficulty as a nation is that we have not been accustomed to such narrow and unattractive alternatives...

...We cannot be effective leaders if we do not give our allies the impression which a good captain must give his company, namely that he has calculated all the hazards of an action...

...Such generalizations do not of course give us an answer to the question of what is to be done about either China or Formosa...

...Our problem, in short, is to avoid catastrophe by bearing heavy burdens, by remaining cool and prudent, by resoluteness in crises and by living together with a loathe-some system in a narrow world...

...French politics may be too dominated by fears of Germany...

...These impressions may not be completely justified...

...Yet to get rid of this foe requires policies which contain the risk of universal annihilation...

...Pearson goes on to say that in order to achieve the condition of coexistence we must be "trigger-ready" but not "trigger-happy...

...We are forced to share this narrow world with a ruthless and unscrupulous foe, who has corrupted every human sanctity and who threatens our security at every turn...

...He declared that it does not mean "friendship and cooperation" and scarcely "mutual toleration...

...It is as if we were forced to live with a very obnoxious neighbor without an adequate police force to protect us, without the chance of leaving the neighborhood (there is only one world), and with the risk of burning up both of our houses if we challenged this obnoxious fellow ultimately...

...In such a situation, we are forced to make the choice between very great evils...

...Since that is an unthinkable alternative, we are forced to opt for "coexistence," however grim the prospects of such a condition may be...

...It implies only one moral preference, and that is that survival is preferable to annihilation...

...We hope against hope that there are some hidden alternatives...

...Such disadvantages include the Asian resentments against Western imperialism and the white man's color arrogance, Asian illusions about Communism, and our democracy's lack of attraction for people who have not had our spiritual, economic and political history...

...These hazards mean that we cannot be immediately successful in Asia...

...In the case of the term "coexistence," Communism usually prefixes it with the adjective "peaceful" and insinuates that peaceful living together would be possible if only we were not so skeptical and alert...

...Our loss of prestige has been due chiefly to the impression that we are heedless in measuring, or in failing to measure, the risks of a global war...

...but even the loss of such advantages, as in the case of Indo-China, ought not to prompt us into military ventures which may lose us political and moral prestige in the part of the world where the fight against Communism is made more complex by the moral and political disadvantages from which we suffer...

...Whatever the answers to the strategic problems in Asia may be, our answers must convince our allies that we are not conceiving them emotionally but with calculating prudence, and that this prudence is capable of envisaging long-range as well as short-range goals...

...In short, the problem which confronts us is whether we have the patience and the resourcefulness to plan long-range goals for a very broad alliance...

...But they do tend to discourage an inflexibility which accentuates, rather than disintegrates, the unity of the Communist world...

...The right solution of these political problems in both Asia and Europe, upon which the health and the unity of the free world depend, is more basic to our security than the frantic defense of any important strategic point, though we cannot afford to be complacent about the loss of any such points...

...We must be on the alert against any type of aggression and must seek to repel Communist political and military expansion at every point...

...In Asia, an attitude of prudence must recognize the complexities which the revolt against colonialism has introduced into the struggle against Communism...

...In Europe, such defeats as the rejection of EDC in the French Assembly confront our statesmanship with similar issues...

...We may have been so heedless in furthering plans for enlisting German divisions that we were blind to resentments which our policy toward Germany created in France, which had, after all, more vivid memories of German aggression than we were able to have...

...But for that very reason we can hope that the health of the Communist world will not remain robust...

...Many people on our side are opposed to "coexistence" either because they think it means appeasement of the foe or because they regard the phrase as harboring illusions about his intentions...

...We cannot win the struggle without satisfying the national aspirations...

...Any effort to reconquer China by purely military means would undoubtedly have the same effect...

...We must not yield any strategic advantages...

...In the present instance, we may be too inflexible and Britain may have illusions...

...We cannot afford the loss of either Germany or France from the defense community of the free world...

...Churchill, had rather fewer illusions about Communism than either Mr...

...Unfortunately (and this is where semantics enters into the picture), this neighbor has bedeviled the phrase "coexistence" as he has previously corrupted the term "democracy...

...There are, in fact, no simple answers to the issues of that debate...

...On the whole, it would be just to say that our reputation for heedlessness is chiefly due to our inclination to measure strategic realities in purely military terms, and to disregard the political complexities which underlie these strategic realities...

...To choose coexistence in preference to "preventive war" does not automatically solve all the strategic problems in our uneasy peace with Communism...

...But in the long run it must perish, at least as a monolithic imperial structure, even though it has been proved that a single nation cannot extricate itself from totalitarianism unaided...

...It does not obviate the debate between those who are so afraid of "appeasement" that they would risk war rather than accept any strategic defeat anywhere in the world, and those who regard such inflexibility as dangerous, chiefly because it will lose the confidence of our European allies and retard the disillusionment about Communism in Asia...

...Yet the semblance of a fact is frequently as important politically as a real fact...

...We have heard too much about the question of whether Mao may be a potential "Tito," for such speculations show that the speculators have not recognized the difference between the small European Communist satellites and a great Asian nation, which is certainly under orthodox Communist leadership and is under no temptation to revolt from its alliance, but which should be dealt with directly rather than under Russian tutelage...

...Roosevelt or General Eisenhower...

...That is why mere military action in Indo-China would have cost us further moral prestige in Asia as the price of saving a strategic point the loss of which was indeed grievous...

...We rightly suspect that these semantic contortions hide, or are meant to hide, his usual unscrupulous intentions...

...Our loss of prestige has been catastrophic in recent months...

...But there are none...

...But, if that is a weakness, it is one which a wise statesmanship takes into account...

...Perhaps it would be better to say that wise statesmanship requires a combination of resolution in meeting present dangers and prudence in measuring ultimate consequences...

...Churchill has given more evidence of possessing this combination of virtues than any contemporary statesman, no matter how condescending his present journalistic critics may be with their insinuations that he is in his dotage...

...If we make the choice of coexistence, we must do so realizing that we are choosing not a good, but a lesser evil...

...They frequently stem from the resentment of those who do not share our power and responsibility...

...The endemic proportions of anti-Americanism are frightening not only to those who value our prestige for its own sake but to those who realize the importance of confidence in the leader for the unity of an alliance...

...Yet that seems to be a possibility...

...Tyranny has short-range advantages over democracy...

...But we ought to remember before making such a judgment that the eminent proponent of coexistence, Mr...