After Coexistence?
MOWRER, EDGAR ANSEL
Will we face the same rude awakening as the men of the mid-'30s? After Coexistence? By Edgar Ansel Mowrer Most scholars insist that history never repeats itself. Yet, to me the period in world...
...We will be told that any such scheme is a militaristic attempt to dominate the world...
...Our French allies, with almost 400,000 soldiers in Algeria, can apparently neither win nor get out...
...hence, the British and French felt they must appease Hitler and Mussolini...
...Lincoln said: "To keep silent when we should protest makes cowards of men...
...What chance does such a policy have of being adopted by either of our American political parties...
...NATO is stronger than ever...
...Until the Russians have demonstrated not just a change of tactics but a real change of intentions, it is unpardonable folly to extend them any sort of moral credit...
...In Cyprus, British soldiers and Greek civilians are killing each other...
...Then as now, the Western peoples were eager to believe men like Neville Chamberlain and Georges Bonnet who promised them "peace in our time...
...The current American election campaign has become a competition in peace talk...
...It is not...
...Canada's Foreign Secretary Lester Pearson closes a fine report on his trip to the USSR with the warning that we must be careful not to "provoke" the Russians...
...Then Adolf Hitler was feverishly pushing ahead in planes, tanks and guns while talking "peaceful coexistence" to easygoing Western Europeans...
...Wilson, would be bad for peace...
...a plebiscite not just for Formosa but for all of China--meanwhile, no further truck with Red China...
...Even the author of containment, George F. Kennan, advises us to give up any thought of freeing the European satellites, to regularize relations with the USSR and concentrate our suspicions on Red China...
...And, anyhow, we have more second-rate B-47s and naval bombers...
...First, however, 1 want to point out some perilous illusions...
...I see little difference between this and FDR's wartime notion that he could handle Stalin...
...In world affairs, nothing talks so eloquently as strength...
...Furthermore, a partnership based on permanent military preponderance and economic advantages would definitely consolidate the West and become a foundation for an expanded NATO that could finally, successfully, compete in every field with the Communist bloc...
...The American people should either convert or get rid of the economizers in the Administration...
...Edgar Ansel Mowrer, who won the Pulilzer Prize in 1932 for Germany Puts the Clock Back, has been journalist since 1913, winning his spurs for the Chicago Daily News in World War I. Bureau chief in Berlin and Paris between the wars, he then served as deputy director of the Office of War Information, later with Radio Free Europe...
...Well, I will bet dollars to pounds, francs, liras or pesos that it will make us more allies than it loses...
...But let the Russians do the worrying...
...A program like this would not preclude negotiations...
...It is a determination to save our children from either a hideous super-war or an unending, time-consuming struggle...
...Make clear to the Russians that we are in this struggle to stay...
...This means the end of make-believe and silly talk about "relaxing tensions...
...Here, then, is a 3-point program for changing the world picture to our advantage...
...Not at once, but later...
...Happy days are here again...
...Having taken the measure of France when he reoccupied the Rhineland, the German Fuehrer knew he had nothing to fear...
...One is our President's apparent belief that he can do business with Bulganin, Khrushchev and Zhukov...
...out of one air base and Ceylon is inviting Britain out of another...
...Though it would require a greater temporary expenditure of money, its main requirements are fortitude and perseverance...
...3. Discriminate in aid between allies and neutrals, making it a visible advantage to be Uncle Sam's partner...
...2. Create and maintain that visible military preponderance which is the only sure foundation for victory without a major war...
...The Israelis and Arabs no sooner agree to a new cease-fire than they start shooting again...
...I suggest a three-point program: 1. Resolve to win the cold war...
...Certainly I have met no ranking American military authority who believes so...
...Everywhere, one sees signs of a weakening of the West...
...Hitler would gladly have sacrificed half of Germany to destroy his adversaries...
...the reunification of Korea under a non-Communist government...
...Didn't our own "Engine Charley" Wilson recently tell a Senate committee that we must not seek military preponderance over the Russians, since if one side were stronger it might try to impose its views...
...punishing--not just rolling back--further local aggressions...
...The point is that under no circumstances should a neutral receive anything like the amount of aid that a dependable ally gets...
...The President should announce a policy of supremacy in vital weapons and then carry it out regardless of cost...
...He has made it clear that the USSR will keep Germany divided and will threaten Britain's Middle Eastern oil until Britain renounces the Baghdad Pact...
...Maybe it would do these things...
...Previous contributors were George F. Kennan and Adolf A. Berle Jr...
...Hence, we should accept disarmament proposals only insofar as they permit us to keep arms supremacy...
...Peace can only be the product of security...
...And, like Britain and France in the Thirties, they keep repealing wishful thoughts: The USSR has changed...
...Treat them as piratical mutineers who, having seized one ship, are using it to capture others...
...that we can stand any conceivable danger and any necessary strain longer than they can...
...Our job should be forcing them to continue an arms race, which they cannot win, until they cry "Enough...
...This is a struggle we dare not lose...
...But I have no objection to the Administration's competing here if it foresees any benefit...
...Today, Walter Lippmann writes that the great thing is that we have "brought Russia into the Middle East peacefully and legitimately...
...policy...
...Meanwhile, Khrushchev has warned that Russia will renounce Communism--and, by implication, Communist conquest--only "when shrimps learn to whistle...
...Back in the Thirties, Lord Halifax agreed that Hitler could take the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia provided he did it peacefully--and was scorned by Americans...
...Machiavelli said: "Winning has always been admired"--and never more, I would add, than by Americans...
...That, opined Mr...
...Maybe not...
...Among his other books are Immortal Italy, The Dragon Awakes and Global War...
...This is a serious charge, and I do not make it lightly...
...At present, little--at least, not during an election campaign...
...Let us drop further official American prophecies about a new war destroying the United States, civilization or the human race...
...Personally, I am convinced that Soviet grants of arms and steel mills to weak states will no more win them for Communism than our grants have brought them into our camp...
...And we should never forget that a British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, although solemnly warned of Hitler's evil intentions by Winston Churchill, flatly refused to sound the alarm in Britain lest--as he afterward admitted--the Tories lose the next election...
...A country that publicly, almost wistfully seeks peace simply encourages rival states to blackmail it...
...The United States is not engaged in an arms race with the Russians...
...Obviously, it is the fault of the leaders, as in the Thirties...
...Then as now, democratic leaders greatly feared an air offensive that would utterly destroy Britain and France...
...From all sides rises the refrain of "relaxing tensions...
...What if the Russians have more long-range bombers and are closer to an intercontinental guided missile than we...
...We will also hear that it will cost us our allies, that we will forfeit the good will of the neutrals, of the Asians and Africans, the Papuans, the Australian bushmen...
...This is the third contribution to our symposium on the changes in Soviet Russia and their effect on U.S...
...Since Geneva, there has been a veritable epidemic of "mediators...
...This does not preclude help for the undecided...
...A fourth--and worst--illusion is the belief that a country that has been challenged can escape defeat by merely resisting and bidding for a stalemate...
...Once the world's peoples realize that the United States intends to create a certain type of world and has the strength to do so, then instead of falling away, as at present, they will come flocking to our door...
...A severe critic of our foreign policy has the duty to offer an alternatye policy...
...A second, even more critical illusion is our apparent assumption that, because the implements of war have become incomparably more devastating than ever before, ambitious leaders will refrain from using them...
...the reunification of Germany, followed by free elections...
...an end to Communist infiltration in places like Laos...
...Iceland has invited the U.S...
...A third illusion is that a major sovereign state can afford to make the pursuit of peace its chief policy...
...Yet, to me the period in world affairs that started with the Geneva "summit meeting" last July is, in many respects, curiously like the dreadful mid-Thirties...
...Renunciation of piracy and of the fruits of piracy should be the only test of Soviet "change...
...It would assure their success by postponing them until the USSR is ready to admit its mistakes and revert to normal behavior...
...We should stay far enough ahead to wither any Soviet hopes of winning either a hot or a cold war...
...that if they want to call off the cold war, they will have to demonstrate it by making real peace, not just a phony truce...
...just as today the Russians know they have nothing to fear since our President assured them of the fact at Geneva...
...Et al...
...But sooner or later, I am convinced, something like it will be accepted because it would work...
...Sooner or later, the team that dares not advance beyond the 55-yard line is going to be scored on...
...Instead of telling people the unpleasant truth, today's leaders tell them what they want to hear...
...Following Eisenhower, Eden, Mollet, Gronchi and even Adenauer have tried their hand at mollifying the Russians...
...I anticipate the protests...
...Who can say that no Hitler slumbers in the breast of some actual or potential Soviet leader...
...the liberation of colonies within the USSR and the end of Soviet colonialism...
...How could it happen again...
...Soon it will probably be the turn of Morocco and Libya to shout, "Yanks go home...
...Today, Western leaders, this time headed by the President of the United States, are courting the USSR...
...Having cleared our minds of dangerous nonsense, what can we Americans substitute for the policy that is manifestly failing...
...Instead, let us publicly announce our aims: the liberation of the satellites...
...Why do the Western peoples once more ask to be duped...
...Peaceful coexistence" is failing so rapidly that many Washington bigwigs, not all of them in uniform, are already saying in private much that I have written here...
Vol. 39 • July 1956 • No. 27
