Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS Despite Dulles Tiff, GOP Foreign Policy Differs Little from Truman's By William Henry Chamberlin When an opposition party lacks issues, there is a temptation to sound off...
...Unfortunately, the necessity of setting a firm barrier against Communist aggression in Asia was recognized later, after the attack on Korea and after China had been lost...
...What to do in Indo-China was a painful and difficult question, to which there is no sure or easy answer, even by hindsight...
...To put it more concretely, we have made a big investment in giving Syngman Rhee the means to build up a powerful army, 650,000 strong...
...Yet there was no native force sufficiently popular and cohesive to represent an altogether promising alternative to the unsatisfactory policy of underwriting the annual French military deficits...
...We were brought to the brink of war, not by our own desire or fault, but by Mr...
...Dulles had said that he led America to the verge of war three times...
...This would seem to explain the furor over Secretary Dulles's remarks in Life magazine...
...The three crises to which the Life article refers were all in the Far East and were all inherited from the previous administration...
...In the case of both Korea and Formosa, the Eisenhower Administration was willing to settle for the half-loaf of the status quo, very much along the line marked out by its predecessor...
...It is not happy to think of the huge sums which we poured down the drain of a French colonial war which could not be won militarily or politically...
...We have supplemented this with military and economic aid...
...But there does not seem to be the basis for a "great debate" on party lines...
...He said nothing of the kind...
...It is hard to see how the Democratic party, without repudiating the whole foreign policy of the Truman Administration after 1946, could censure a Republican Secretary of State for facing up to the challenge of Communist aggression...
...It might not have been necessary to fight in Korea had it not been for a careless speech by Secretary of State Dean Acheson, which omitted Korea from our defense perimeter...
...But we are not backing that army in any attempt to overrun North Korea...
...German rearmament, which may get off the ground in 1956 or 1957, was first advocated by Acheson in 1950...
...It is all to the good that questions of foreign policy should be intelligently discussed...
...The talk has been a little "tougher," the nationalist note has been struck more often, but the broad objectives have been the same: peace without appeasement, holding the line against new Communist gains without taking the moral, political and military responsibility of "shooting first...
...Truman's eminently correct decisions to give military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey and to refuse to be forced out of West Berlin...
...We were pushed over the brink of war when we refused to throw Korea to the wolves...
...If one takes 1946 as the date of reference for Europe and 1950 for Asia, there is little the Eisenhower Administration has attempted that was not implicit in the policy of its predecessor...
...We have given Chiang Kai-shek the protection of an alliance which pledges us to come to his aid if there is a Communist attempt to conquer Formosa...
...On the basic issue of maintaining peace through strength and alliances with like-minded nations, there is no substantial difference of opinion along party lines...
...Now a new chapter has begun in Indo-China and perhaps it will be possible to bolster the government of Ngo Dinh Diem to a point where it will not be a pushover for an attack from the North...
...What he said was: "We were brought to the verge of war"-which is very different...
...But we have not made it technically possible for the Nationalists to attempt a landing on the mainland...
...Dulles has not departed from the model of NATO in encouraging SEATO for Southeast Asia and METO for the Middle East...
...But the truth is that the Eisenhower-Dulles team has not steered the American ship of state as far from the course of its predecessor as some Republicans hoped and some Democrats feared...
...The decisive change in American foreign policy took place in 1946, when the inane idea that it was always up to us to "get along" with Stalin (with no corresponding obligation on his part) was abandoned...
...There would be ground for criticism if Mr...
...Charges and counter-charges in the field of foreign policy will be tossed back and forth during a hot election campaign...
...But, once the North Korean army had moved in force into South Korea, President Truman's decision to fight was right and was backed by the majority of Republicans in Congress...
...WHERE the NEWS ENDS Despite Dulles Tiff, GOP Foreign Policy Differs Little from Truman's By William Henry Chamberlin When an opposition party lacks issues, there is a temptation to sound off loudly on minor criticisms...
Vol. 39 • February 1956 • No. 6
