Ike's Foreign Policy:

...Our diplomatic defeats in Asia and Europe were not, like the Soviet or Chinese Communist revolutions, even in part the product of immense forces which might have been contained and offset only at prohibitive cost...

...Perhaps the consequences of Eisenhower's foreign policy to the security of the United States can be most graphically summed up by contrasting where we were in January 1953 and where we are today...

...So long as fundamental unity of purpose and action is maintained among the three Western allies, we can hope to organize Europe and safely bring into it a Germany firmly bound to the West...

...At the United Nations, skilful diplomacy had stripped the Security Council of its veto power in cases of aggression, so that the UN could not be paralyzed by the Soviet Union in the event of another Korea...

...But, unless Britain and the United States are part of the European picture, Germany may well dominate the Continent...

...Since this is a threat to commit national suicide, it is hard to see what meaning it could have as a diplomatic weapon, either to ourselves or to Europeans...

...It would destroy the political appeal of the European idea, which would become not the dynamic rallying point of future hopes in Europe, but an abiding threat of renewed occupation by goose-stepping armies in field-gray...

...If British action, and similar American action, had come in time, Europe would be firmly on the road to balanced integration...

...The heart of the matter is that Stalin's death, and the strength and determination of American policy under President Truman, had by 1953 forced a change of tactics on the Communists...

...If we stand forth not in the name of our own tradition but as a cynical defender of anyone who promises military aid, we can rally mercenary armies but not the enthusiastic cooperation of free peoples...

...no coherent picture emerges...

...Thus, a tragic split developed between the United States and France, a split which casts long shadows in Europe...

...The foreign policy of the Truman Administration was carried out by a bipartisan team of real distinction, which greatly helped in the effort to expound the ideas behind it to the American people...

...That would have been a better road than the one we are now on, for the London and Paris agreements do not protect us against the risks of German militarism as effectively as EDC...

...In retrospect, this resourceful record now seems little short of dazzling...

...The armed forces have been weakened, both in present strength and in the vital area of research...

...the fear of occupation is an immense traumatic force in European life today, and we can ignore it only at extreme peril...

...Most of what Chester Bowles accomplished in India has been lost, and Asian opinion has turned slowly against us, except in the Philippines...

...Its most familiar weapon is that of a bluff that can be called with impunity...

...But even the few statements by the President or his Secretary of State have almost invariably been followed by hurried trips to London or Paris, after which the original statements have been modified or explained away...

...We allowed our feeble bluff to be called, and transferred the rage and shame we felt for our own lack of policy to the French...

...And nothing less than a treaty would do after France's sad experience with American failure to ratify the security system which President Wilson approved after World War I. Until these last few weeks, Britain was willing to do whatever we did in relation to Europe, but nothing more...

...The Soviet Union had been stopped in Iran and Turkey...

...But, if it comes, it will be isolationism nonetheless, and as dangerous as ever...

...The Marshall Plan and the Truman Doctrine did not suffer from the ambiguity of the "new look" or the policy of "massive retaliation," which became more obscure the more they were explained...

...A succession of inconsistent policy statements about Spain, Italy, France, Israel and Germany have confused and frightened opinion everywhere...

...An active and resourceful diplomacy in the Far East would have used the UN military success in Korea as the basis for protecting the integrity of Indo-China...

...As a military weapon, too, it would be fatally defective...

...Twenty months of paralyzed fumbling with our foreign policy have more than confirmed the warning...

...No comparable factors can explain the weakness and vacillation of the Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policy...

...The first was the relative strength and discipline of the Soviet armies at the end of the war, as contrasted with the exhaustion of Western Europe, and the universal demand in the United States to transfer our armed forces to the Pacific, and then to bring them home...

...A pro-German Anglo-American foreign policy, carried through in the Twenties and early Thirties, made the Second World War almost inevitable...

...The Eisenhower Administration has not dared to lay a major--or minor--foreign-policy issue before Congress...

...America is and should remain a symbol of freedom, of generous aspiration and of democratic values throughout the world...

...Since our troops--and British troops--were in Europe anyway, and clearly had to stay as a practical matter at least until the cold war was ended, the only issue confronting the Eisenhower Administration was whether their presence should be guaranteed by treaty...

...The Foreign Service has been demoralized by Dulles's craven failure to protect his staff against unwarranted attack...

...But our greatest ally in the struggle with world Communism is the hatred of the Soviet and satellite masses for their rulers...

...For that reason, his foreign policy has significantly increased the long-term risk of general war...

...It is clear in hindsight that the same factors which produced the Korean and Indo-China armistices would have led the Chinese to respect the Indo-Chinese proviso in the Korean armistice...

...they were, in fact, two fronts of the same war...

...The United States is now rapidly and resentfully approaching the isolationist policy of the interwar period...

...Three forces have contributed almost equally to this end: the Eisenhower Administration's paralysis of fear before the Republicans in Congress, its unwillingness to face any steps in foreign policy that might delay a reduction in military spending, and sheer incompetence and lack of imagination in the day-to-day conduct of foreign relations...

...We beat the air ineffectually, vacillating and uncertain...

...There was never any doubt as to what was sought by these successive steps, or as to the means to be employed...

...They are there because it is in our vital national interest to prevent war, and to keep Europe's manpower and resources from falling under Soviet control...

...Events proved that Churchill's program of clearing Italy and invading the Balkans would have been far wiser than the course we pursued...

...It could have had, and had, no effect on the real situation...

...For the Soviet fear of general war is a fear not only of mass bombing but of mass surrender once its troops come in contact with strong Western armies...

...President Eisenhower was not elected to lead a retreat to isolation...

...Such a treaty would have cost little or nothing...

...The wounds of this tragic period have been self-inflicted...

...The loss of ground we have suffered in these twenty months was unnecessary...

...The Marshall Plan had released and canalized a rebirth of European energies...

...The essence of our security interest in Europe is so simple that it requires constant repetition: If any kind of balance of power in the world is to be achieved, Western Europe must be on our side...

...While it was clear to us that British and American troops would have to stay in Europe for a long time, it is impossible to blame the French, after their post-World War I experience, and with the Indo-Chinese debacle bitter in their hearts, for insisting that we formally recognize the inevitable and undertake by treaty to give EDC the kind of backing which Britain has now given to the armies contemplated by the London agreements...

...They derived primarily from three intractable factors in the underlying situation...

...The Chinese called Dulles's bluff and discovered that it was just that...

...And we had made the first moves toward bringing German and Japanese strength safely into the Western coalition...

...And he was elected, among other reasons, because the American people thought that he believed in...

...And we had left our Asian friends and collaborators to face either exile or firing squads...

...Europe cannot be defended, and the world cannot be defended, without German forces in Europe...

...Greece was saved for the free world...

...The United States can never wage preventive war...

...That policy has been, and is, inadequate to defend American security...

...A few speeches and policy statements have been made, punctuating long periods of puzzled silence...

...Through the Point Four program, an approach had been made to solving the problem of deepening poverty in many parts of the world--a powerful weapon in the struggle to save the so-called "underdeveloped" countries for freedom...

...It was the Eisenhower Administration's failure to understand this elementary history and arithmetic that doomed EDC...

...Professor Rostow, of the Graduate Faculty of Economics at Yale University, was a special assistant on the UN Economic Commission for Europe...

...It was an error, too, not to have Western troops take Berlin and Prague...

...it has been the result of blind and torpid foreign policy, needlessly giving up much that was gained by the Truman Administration...

...As one commentator recently remarked, it is sheer cruelty to recall the Administration's pledges to "liberate" the satellite countries, to "unleash" Chiang Kai-shek, to pursue a policy of "massive retaliation" and, above all, to "seize the initiative" from the Communists...

...Britain and the United States must not and cannot safely view themselves as arbiters between France and Germany, nor can France and Britain conceive of their role as that of mediators between the United States and the Communists...

...Ike's Foreign Policy By Eugene V. Rostow WHEN Sir Winston Churchill visited Washington in January 1953, he was warned by a wise and experienced American: "The Eisenhower Administration will in six months be a sodden administration, incapable of leadership at home or abroad...

...The morale of the Foreign Service and the State Department, which had largely carried out this remarkable series of complex tasks, was at a high point, despite the sniping of Senator McCarthy...

...A pro-German policy would turn the Continent--including our faithful friends in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Rumania--into disillusioned and depressed neutralists...

...But American security interests cannot be adequately safeguarded for long by the British Foreign Office alone...

...the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war, was probably beyond the control either of diplomacy or of limited--or, indeed, unlimited--war, at least after 1946...

...Its approach to the people has been even weaker...

...it would soon evaporate in defeat, even as a military policy...

...In what direction are we going?--that is the basic question examined here...

...An America which will not trade, an America which denies passports to its own people and visas to foreign scientists and artists, an America which has abandoned the Point Four program cannot be the effective leader of world democracy...

...Meanwhile, our standing with the Asian peoples had fallen to nearly zero...

...This chain of events in Asia and Europe has been the principal test of the Eisenhower foreign policy...

...in terms of the relationship between France and the United States, it made the Korean armistice a separate peace by one ally at the expense of another...

...It is difficult to realize how much has been lost, and at what cost...

...This was the key to French ratification of EDC...

...It has led to a weakening of our relationship with Britain and France, and even to periods of complete isolation from them...

...Unless there is an obvious, open and unassailable partnership of the three primary Western powers, the Western alliance will always be weakened by German or other diplomacy...

...The policy of basing a European policy on Germany rather than France has a fatal appeal for some British and American policy-makers...

...Many phrases have been coined at home and abroad to describe the policy of President Eisenhower and his aides...

...Our troops are not in Europe as an act of grace or "aid" to anyone...

...If there is to be any strength in the Western alliance during the next four years, you--the British--must provide it...

...Yet, this is exactly what happened...

...We had been defeated...

...By guaranteeing her presence in Europe, Britain has made it possible to salvage something from the wreckage of EDC...

...Both President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles acknowledged this repeatedly, and declared that the armistice in Korea would be a "fraud" if it merely released Chinese strength to intensify the Indo-Chinese war...

...He beat Taft for the Republican nomination in 1952 because he was not an isolationist...

...In the last twenty months, we have come dangerously far on the road to such isolation...

...And the policy behind these moves was explained to Congress and the people in frank detail...

...The only way to prevent this, once the necessity of German rearmament is conceded, is for Britain and the United States to be firmly and formally linked to the European military system...

...An end of the fighting in Korea and Indo-China was indispensable to their peace offensive--an end on the most favorable possible terms, of course, but one, in any event, that would remove the risk of general war, and give the Communists some hope of disarming and dividing the Western nations, during the final phase of the Soviet atomic build-up...

...Failing to grasp the potentialities of this fact, the Eisenhower Administration took a series of steps in the Far East which not only weakened our position there but almost destroyed it in Europe...

...Korea and Indo-China were closely connected...

...The great defeat of that era...

...His recent threat to withdraw American troops from Europe was perhaps the worst of his blunders...

...Almost every one of these steps depended upon or was buttressed by Congressional action, as well as international agreement...

...The hostilities in Korea precipitated the massive rearmament of the West and thus decisively altered the world balance of military force...

...It has been a foreign policy without nerve, without insight and without the will to win...

...At a time when we have lost the diplomatic initiative to Britain and France within the Western alliance, weeks after great Soviet diplomatic victories at Geneva and Paris, these pathetic claims and boasts represent a level of discourse on foreign policy which merely stirs fear and misgivings at home and abroad...

...And, as the situation has developed, it was a catastrophe to acquiesce in the Soviet Union's bland refusal to carry out the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, and in the 1948 coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia...

...And the presence of American troops in Germany remains the cheapest and safest way to achieve that end...

...Chester Bowles, our Ambassador to India, had opened new vistas with his energetic and good-humored methods of diplomacy...

...And, above all, we have profoundly compromised our basic relationship with Britain and France, which must be the key to our foreign policy...

...Over and over again--in Korea, in Indo-China, in Trieste, and most recently in London--Dulles has made threats which he was not prepared to carry out...

...The threat of atomic bombing is the force which has precariously kept the peace since 1945, and it must remain an integral part of our security arrangements...

...The invasion of southern France turned out to be unnecessary, although at the time the decisions were made the Normandy landing was a ticklish and uncertain adventure...

...With such a Europe, including German military strength, we could face with confidence the task of bringing order to the Middle East, and stability and progress to Africa and the Far East...

...We could not long keep our air bases in Europe and Africa unless our troops remained in Germany to screen Europe against the risk of occupation...

...President Eisenhower took office long after the Government had fully alerted American opinion to the threat of Soviet power...

...Of course, the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations made mistakes, too, in the realm of foreign policy, both during the war and in the early postwar years...

...When President Eisenhower was elected, American foreign policy was the strongest in the world...

...Now that election oratory has subsided, we turn again to critical examination of United States foreign policy, especially as it has developed in the last two years...

...In the end, nothing was done, either politically or militarily...

...As we slowly withdraw from the center of European politics, and as our position in Asia is gradually weakened, we lose the opportunity, as we now lack the will, to make of Western foreign policy what it must be to prevail: the dynamic force which can offer the free world a real alternative to Communism...

...While violent political storms raged around the persons of the President and his Secretary of State, they successfully obtained more affirmative foreign-policy votes from Congress than had been done even in wartime...

...Crude and clumsy intervention in the Italian and German elections has alienated European support...

...And it would have arranged a dynamic political program with the French to rally the strong native forces within Indo-China which had remained aloof from both France and the Vietminh...

...After the fighting in Korea was stabilized, we laid down fair terms for an armistice and started patiently to negotiate for it...

...A dominant Germany, once men like Adenauer are gone, could all too easily revert to the policy of Bismarck, the Weimar Republic and Hitler--a deal with Russia which would imperil the West...

...Fortunately, British initiative during the last six months has helped to fill the vacuum created by the disappearance of American foreign policy...

...He had done much to explain our nation and policy to the Indian Government and people, and to win from them at least a benevolent neutrality...

...The Vandenberg Resolution, the Troops-for-Europe Resolution and the NATO alliance were long steps toward redressing the world balance of power...

...The opportunity created by Tito's defection was being slowly and correctly exploited...

...The Soviet leaders know better than anyone how Hitler's brutality spurred Russian resistance after the war had begun in 1941 with large-scale surrenders to the German Army...

...Therefore, the threat to withdraw our troops from Europe is really a threat to adopt the Taft-Hoover strategy of Fortress America--the policy of complete isolation...

...It barely beat down the Bricker Amendment, and refused to allow a vote on a three-year extension of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act...

...These last were errors with deep roots...

...We have fought two wars in this century to prevent German hegemony in Europe, and it is still our national interest to prevent such a development at all costs...

...It had moved forward from success to success, intelligently adapting its tactics to changes in the underlying situation of power and opinion...

...In this process, our relationship with France is a matter not of sentiment but of necessity...

...But we had no real policy in Indo-China...

...We had failed to obtain in time the necessary French concessions to Indo-Chinese nationalism (which were made, too late, by Premier Mendes-France...

...Psychological warfare is no substitute for policy, and propaganda cannot conceal the absence of policy...

...Such an America may well wake up on the morning of the big test disillusioned and alone, and in grievous danger...

...Now, despairing of American action, she has acted properly, though late...

...The Berlin airlift symbolized the stubborn will of the United States, and its patient readiness to avoid or ignore provocations...

...This is what made the issue of asylum for prisoners of war in Korea so profoundly important from the military as well as the moral standpoint...

...Neither the public nor Congress has been given any sustained lead on foreign-policy problems, save for a parade of meaningless slogans...

...They did not represent, as often alleged, a blindness within the American Government to the nature of Communism or of Soviet aspirations...

...For the air strategy of peripheral defense alone would not only destroy the political basis for European resistance to Communism...

...To secure a balance of power in the world, and the ends of a positive and dynamic foreign policy as well, the Western alliance must be built around the unity--the Entente Cordiale--of Britain, France and the United States...

...Finally, and most important, our inability to risk war with the Soviet Union over Poland and the other Eastern European countries in 1945 and 1946 derived from a fact which is one of the proud distinctions of our civilization and national character: No President can take the responsibility for ordering Americans into battle without being convinced that the peaceful alternatives have been truly exhausted...

...Thus, Russia's callous breaches of the Potsdam agreement were, like Hitler's moves in the Rhineland and Czechoslovakia, the alarm-clocks which made possible the later assertion of a firm policy...

...In Korea, we had mobilized United Nations strength to resist and punish aggression--the most important single policy step in the postwar world...

...President Eisenhower's letter of last April, promising to keep American troops in Europe as long as he thought they were needed, completely missed the point...

...We should be grateful for the development of British policy, but the strength of Eden is no excuse for the inadequacies of Dulles...

...This first lesson of modern history is made more urgent than ever by the strength of the Communist movement and the threat it poses in every corner of the world...

...Modern isolationism may wear some of the trappings of Air Force programs...

...It could have the same result again...

...It has caused a weakening of the confident morale, the vision and the vigor which are needed to put heart into the struggle for survival, here and throughout the free world...

...The second was the genuine popularity of the Soviet Union at that time as the ally which had "killed the most Germans," and the correlative feeling that, after all Russia had suffered, she had the "right" to have friendly governments on her borders...

...and would carry forward and even improve on, the bipartisan foreign policy of President Truman...

...The Chinese action in Indo-China was more than a fraud on the armistice...

...A Western ultimatum to the Soviet Union after V-E Day, however desirable, would have been unthinkable in terms both of popular opinion throughout the West and of the necessities of the Pacific War...

...Yet, he has pursued a program of appeasement which has weakened the system of alliances on which our survival as a nation depends...