Democracy and Foreign Policy

...Eisenhower is doing a good job...

...And the percentage of those who have this favorable opinion is still greater than the percentage of those who contributed to his electoral triumph, just at the moment when the bold but futile Anglo-French inva-tion of the Suez was proving that the Administration had given us a much too favorable account of affairs in the troubled Middle East...

...Thus, Eisenhower is so popular despite the dubious lack of specific policies in his general program precisely because his mood accurately represents the mood of the American people...

...We must recognize the hazard to democracy in this situation, even though there is no answer to the problem which it presents except a more alert electorate and more searching debate of foreign issues...

...The finger would have to be pointed at the "one-party press" which Adlai Stevenson brought to our attention in the 1952 campaign...

...With Nasser having thumbed his nose at all the "assumptions" on which the Israelis yielded to the President's pressure (which undoubtedly represented implied promises on the part of the Administration), well over 70 per cent of the populace still believe that Mr...

...The problems of foreign policy arc too remote and too complex either to interest or to be comprehended by the man in the street...

...Whether he also persuaded the President to adopt a more realistic attitude toward Nas-serian imperialism is not yet clear...

...Such a conclusion merely means that the totalitarian nations can safely push forward everywhere, for we have announced beforehand that we will not assume any risks...

...No one has called attention, as far as I am aware, to the remarkable sapience of the Canadian Foreign Office in comparison with our own...

...Doesn't it seem easier to combine our traditional idealism, our devotion to "peace and justice," with our vaunted prosperity and become convinced that "economic aid" plus democracy will solve all the problems of the world...

...whether foreign policy is not the Achilles' heel of democracy...

...One can only pity our allies, who are too dependent upon our power to tell us the truth about our policy or lack of it...

...Our uncritical attitude toward UN procedures is only one of the aspects of United States foreign policy which do not concern a complacent public but do arouse the misgivings of our sophisticated allies...

...We have not solved any problems in the Middle East despite the catch-all promises of the Eisenhower Doctrine...

...But meanwhile the Assembly gives the same vote to a recently born nation which has difficulty in gaining its own security and to the great hegemonous nations of the world...

...The Times correspondent allowed himself only the obliquely critical remark that observers questioned whether Macmillan would go very far in countering the President's passion for equality...

...Egypt even when the latter has become the locus of a new imperialism which threatens the life-line of Europe and dominates the budding nationalism of the Arab world...

...This wool-liness in our official policies has filled our allies with grave misgivings, while the American people as a whole remains remarkably complacent and serene...

...The frustration of the Russian veto in the Security Council persuaded us to make more and more use of the Assembly...

...None of us would sacrifice the values of a free society even though we realize that in a situation of peace through atomic stalemate the totalitarian nations may have an advantage over the free societies—for they can run the risk of total war which every local war involves...

...The most vulnerable part of the big budget is the economic aid to our poorer allies...

...They impinge on peoples that have no vote in our nation...

...Since the latter have no votes, the general guess is that economic aid will be cut...

...If we can put our finger on any specific cause, we still cannot point to any constitutional defect in our system...

...Even the commentators, who are forced to become critical by their knowledge of the facts, usually deflect their blows so that their criticisms will not disturb the complacency of the public, which has adopted a myth to make our paradise in an insecure world seem a little less incongruous than it really is...

...Domestic policy impinges on the lives of all the citizens, and one can always justify the wisdom of a democracy by remarking that even an ignorant man knows better than the most skilled cobbler whether or not the shoe designed for him pinches his foot...

...Our present embarrassment proves the inadequacy of this cure, because America has the most independent executive power of any democracy...

...There are some difficulties, of course, because our wealthier citizens, including the Secretary of the Treasury, think our budget is too large...

...All these are problems of grave moment for the effectiveness of our leadership in the alliance of "free" nations, yet none of them are seriously debated by the voters or even by the elite of knowledgeable experts...

...Then, as now, the overwhelming majority of the press is devoted to the President's cause and is interested in giving the most favorable possible account of his policy...

...His cure was a stronger executive, emancipate...

...Eisenhower's vague policies reflect popular complacency, and that's why only a handful resent his failures democracy and foreign policy By Reinhold Niebuhr The Gallup Poll reveals that President Eisenhower has lost only a few percentage points of his popularity since the Middle East crisis went from bad to worse...

...The President's vagueness is, in short, an accurate mirror of the nation's own vague idealism and liberalism, made the more acceptable by being embodied in "modern Republicanism...

...One may rejoice in the birth of the new nation of Ghana and its quick admission to the United Nations and yet be conscious of the fact that its power and responsibility are not equal to our own...

...But one could wish for more astute leadership in our democracy, leadership which has not erroneously concluded, from the fact that "there is no alternative to peace in a nuclear age," that the risk of war must be avoided at all costs...

...Thus, for instance, the New York Times reported that British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had sought to persuade the President that our common policy must be to guard the alliance of the "responsible nations," particularly Britain and the United States, against the perils of irresponsible small nations which now dominate the f X General Assembly...

...This contrast of opinions again raises the quest...

...He did not say that this passion for equality implies that the President is not sufficiently aware of one of the great embarrassments in the present affairs of the UN...

...The other difficulty is that our conception of "democracy," when transferred to the international sphere, means loyalty to the United Nations, particularly to the voting procedures of the General Assembly...

...They glory in presenting our foreign policy as the acme of virtue and wisdom in a world in which every other nation seems intent on shocking us with its folly...

...The slick magazines are even more biased...

...But in foreign policy we deal with forms of power and responsibility which do not impinge on the interests of the voters except in the final instance of war...

...We are, moreover, a very prosperous and comfortable nation, not inclined to look at the details of our responsibilities in the world lest the perplexities disturb our ease...

...Democracies are naturally reluctant to go to war, but uncritical of steps by their government which might contribute to an ultimate catastrophe...

...Macmillan did finally persuade us to participate in the Baghdad Pact and thus assume specific responsibility which we had previously disavowed...

...One need not accept Mr...

...We have invested that estimable body with all the aura of our liberalism and our universal-ism...

...Perhaps our difficulty illustrates not so much the general weakness of democracies in foreign policy as the particular embarrassment of a great nation which has been vaulted into a hegemonous position in the alliance of the free nations without serving sufficient apprenticeship for this arduous task...

...It does not matter that the aura does not quite fit the facts...

...No public clamor was responsible for our predicament...

...There is quite a contrast between this favorable opinion held by the voters and the sober opinion of many careful students of foreign policy, to wit, that the Administration was chiefly responsible for the desperation of our oldest allies and is now responsible for the continued defiance of the little dictator who succeeds partly by molding the opinion of the UN majority and partly by defying the decrees of that now impotent agency of international affairs...

...Lippmann's cure for this failure of a democracy in foreign policy to be impressed by his pessimistic analysis of the problem in his recent book...

...from popular clamor...

...It is by this wisdom of direct experience that democracies prove their superiority over any government of the elite...

...American power is so great that most of us do not even know of the areas of impingement...

...A Public Philosophy...

...Sometimes a few obliquely critical words appear in the news dispatches...

...Walter Lippmann may be right in suggesting that a democracy, once embarked on a conflict, is also reluctant to make a wise peace because such a peace is incompatible with the vindictive passions which the war has inevitably aroused...

...The unstable but fevered "anti-colonialism" of these small nations automatically favors the well-known ex-colonial power...