Frustrations of American Power:

...It was too much to ask of a country...

...Fortunately, in this instance British statecraft overcame the mistakes of our policy, after Mendes-France had clearly proved that the French would not support EDC...

...The result was that the French had to come to terms with the Communists...

...FRUSTRATIONS OF AMERICAN POWER By Reinhold Niebuhr Our failure to save Indo-China and the collapse of EDC have seriously undermined the myth of American omnipotence, and thus may make the future easier to bear THE RECENT EXPERIENCES in our foreign relations ought to have a wholesome influence on a very powerful nation which naturally finds it difficult to adjust to frustrations in the day of its seeming omnipotence...

...But it is the virtue which it is most difficult for us as a nation to learn, both because our power is so great and because we have been so unaccustomed to frustration...

...This was necessary because the only way of averting defeat was by the application of military might at the risk of precipitating a general Asian war...

...In this instance, it was the British who exploited these alternatives to snatch victory out of seeming defeat...

...Democracy means adjustment to the will and interests of others who are linked with us in a community of common destiny...

...The addition of military might to the resources of a cause which has moral deficiencies may accentuate those deficiencies rather than overcome them...

...The French were holding the Communists at bay in Indo-China...

...Committed as we were to the proposition that we would not yield anywhere to Communist forces, the Administration seemed to play for a while with the idea of giving air aid to the French in Indo-China...

...The one led quickly to a larger success...

...we will not know for a long time how costly the setback in Indo-China may have been to our cause...

...In this case, an original frustration was the preliminary to a larger success in establishing the unity of Europe...

...The road to peace is a long and hard one...

...No one can have his way completely in a democracy...

...This lesson in the limits of our power is particularly relevant to the situation in Asia, where for a long while to come the free world is in contest with Communism, and where a decaying feudal economy, resentment against past colonialism and a nascent nationalist movement are exploited by Communism to our disadvantage...

...The two frustrations, Indo-China and EDC, were thus of entirely different types...

...We have some ultimate resources to set against these disadvantages...

...There are dominant forces in a democracy, but no force is so dominant as to compel others to do its will...

...There are many detours in it...

...Therefore, the peace of the world, depending as it does on the health and strength of the alliance of free nations, must ultimately be guaranteed by the patience and resourcefulness with which the most powerful nation in the alliance meets and, on occasion, circumvents its frustrations...

...The public reaction to that speech, and the reaction of the Democrats in Congress to the suggestion of giving the President a free hand in using air power in Indo-China, prevented our further involvement in this war...

...This result is very disappointing to us and to the whole free world, though it did not involve the complete debacle in strategy which was hinted before the event...

...But it soon became apparent that Europe, particularly France, was very reluctant to adopt it...

...It was France's first venture in transcending its own sovereignty...

...We may suffer frustrations of both kinds in the future, because the field in which we operate is very large and the forces and factors in it are very complex...

...Germany was ready for this, because the plan was part of a policy of restoring her sovereignty...

...There are limits to the efficacy of military power--and therefore to the help we can render in situations in which moral, political and economic deficiencies may invite defeat...

...Our power and prestige were limited in guiding the policy of an allied nation...

...Our chief danger is that we will not bear the burdens long enough to outlast the resourceful foe and that we will be impatient with allies whose trust in us is the indispensable cement of unity in our grand alliance...

...A nation with as much power and responsibility as we have must, of course, vigorously exercise its power and fulfil its responsibilities...

...The plan appealed to every idealistic sentiment...

...We had sworn that we would not deliver another person to Communist tyranny...

...We periodically lectured France on her duties and threatened her with an "agonizing reappraisal" of our policy of aid if she disappointed us...

...The same Vice President Nixon who campaigned so airily last month on the proposition that "the difference between the foreign policy of the Truman and the Eisenhower Administrations is that Truman got us into wars and Eisenhower got us out of them"--this same Nixon suggested to a society of newspaper editors that we would have to hold Southeast Asia even at the expense of greater military commitments...

...The Indo-Chinese situation represents a case in which frustration must be accepted...

...It proved that "there is more than one way to skin a cat," and that if we face frustration it is well not to persist dogmatically but to seek other ways, more acceptable to our allies...

...Patience under frustration is not the only virtue our leadership requires...

...Eden not only "sold" the plan to the Continental nations but made an indispensable contribution to its attractiveness by reversing the traditional British military policy and promising to maintain British troops on the Continent as long as the majority of the Western Europeans desired...

...The smaller nations were also ready to renounce their sovereignty in the defense community...

...The second defect was that the plan demanded of France an intimate partnership with an ancient foe, Germany, and threatened to isolate her from a hereditary friend, Great Britain...

...Vietnam was partitioned, and the prospects are that the Communists may ultimately gain most of it...

...Both the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations invested all the capital of our prestige in the plan...

...The success of the London Conference was due chiefly to the sagacity of Churchill and Eden, who elaborated a plan for extending the Brussels Treaty and North Atlantic defense arrangements so that Germany could be rearmed within that context...

...France is at the core of the second great frustration which we have suffered and which we must learn to bear...

...No amount of military power could compensate for this moral deficiency in our cause...

...The first experience was Indo-China...

...But these warnings only served to heighten the anti-American animus in France...

...The EDC situation, on the other hand, offered political alternatives which led to success after the momentary defeat...

...Both France and Italy were very tardy in bringing EDC to a vote in Parliament...

...The simple fact was that the EDC plan had two defects.The first was that it demanded the explicit abridgement or disavowal of sovereignty by the member nations...

...But we cannot apply them without temporary frustrations, and we cannot overcome the frustrations by the mere exercise of military might...

...We can regret the defeat of our strategy, but most astute observers would agree that even this dismal result is better than our involvement in another Asian war...

...An alliance of free nations has the same characteristics on the international level that democracy has on the national level...

...Our frustration was obvious...

...France alone of the great nations was asked to make a sacrifice without corresponding gains--hence the stubborn French resistance...

...France originally presented us with what seemed to be a creative solution of the age-old problem of Franco-German animosity: a common defense establishment in the "European Defense Community...

...The other has deeper implications...

...Since our greater power displays itself in a much larger realm of purposes and cross-purposes than did our smaller power in a previous century, we must accustom ourselves to frustration and accommodate ourselves to the impotence of our alleged omnipotence...

...But their tardiness in giving the Indo-Chinese states national independence robbed their cause of the moral content required for success...