Must We Be Helpless in Hungary?
EMMET, CHRISTOPHER
By Christopher Emmet Must We Be Helpless in Hungary? Revolution will avert war, not start it Eight weeks ago, the United Nations condemned the intervention of Soviet troops in Hungary, demanded...
...Obviously not because President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles do not feel as other Americans do about the heroism of the Hungarians or the horror of the Soviet massacres...
...Christopher Emmet, writer and radio commentator, is chairman of the American Friends of the Captive Nations...
...Revolution will avert war, not start it Eight weeks ago, the United Nations condemned the intervention of Soviet troops in Hungary, demanded their withdrawal, called for the end of deportations, and demanded the right of UN observers to enter Hungary...
...it has already appealed to the other NATO powers to join in blocking it...
...The Soviets do not fear an attack by our few ground divisions, and they know that we will not launch a nuclear war unless they invade Western Europe or the Middle East...
...In this lies our only real hope for a permanent solution, for the world will never be truly safe from nuclear war so long as those dread weapons rest in the hands of criminal men in the Kremlin...
...The same thing is true of the West Berlin Government...
...As for the theory that the Russians would, like an excuse to launch a war, the spread of the Hungarian revolt to other satellites would be the least auspicious moment for an offensive against the West...
...A vital means of exerting pressure for a Soviet withdrawal is the imposition of maximum economic sanctions...
...The only thing they really have to fear is their own armies and peoples...
...And as far as nuclear war is concerned, the Kremlin is thoroughly aware that the West's greatest strength lies in nuclear weapons...
...There is no German army, and the best French and British divisions are in North Africa and the Mediterranean, not Germany...
...The fact that bloody incidents do not provoke a major war nowadays has been illustrated by the shooting down of a dozen American and British planes, and the intervenMoreover, in the event of an East German uprising the West German Government not only would fail to encourage intervention but would do its utmost to prevent it...
...cautious in the Hungarian crisis...
...if necessary, we should extend aid to our allies to make reduction of their Eastern trade possible...
...Two different types of alleged war danger are cited by the advocates of a cautious policy...
...It knows that the entire Hungarian revolt was waged with Russian arms supplied to the rebels either by the Hungarian Communist Army or by Soviet defectors...
...According to this, an East German revolt might lead to the influx of thousands of volunteers from West Berlin and West Germany, leading to a Soviet attack on Berlin and war with the NATO powers...
...Their extreme caution clearly stems from fear of an H-bomb war if they take more energetic action, even by measures short of war...
...In the course of the cold war, there have frequently been situations which could easily have led to a full-scale war...
...And it knows that war with the West would give the Soviet and satellite armies the supreme opportunity to revolt or defect...
...Why has our Government's policy been s...
...intervention to save Greece, Turkey, Berlin and Iran, as well as Korea, provided innumerable opportunities...
...Then there is the "wounded tiger" theory...
...The President is more familiar with the awful potentialities of the new weapons than we are, and we must respect the motives for his prudence...
...Most important of all, if we keep the present drive for freedom alive, the growing unrest within the Soviet Union itself may be strengthened...
...If incidents could "provoke" the Soviets to war, U.S...
...What could the Soviets do in the event of a Hungarian-style general strike throughout Eastern Europe...
...The reason is obvious...
...If we encourage passive resistance in Eastern Europe and penalize the Soviet Union by every political and economic means for the Hungarian aggression, the Russians may withdraw from the captive nations in their own interests provided the West agrees to have the whole area, perhaps including Germany as far west as the Rhine, disarmed under President Eisenhower's "open skies" plan...
...This means using Western economic strength to shore up the Soviet slave empire now in the hope that it will "wither away" later...
...First let us take the "accident theory...
...It is even less likely now, when unrest is sweeping Eastern Europe and Russia itself, than it was before the Polish and Hungarian revolts...
...War would merely provide new opportunities for the rebellious forces behind the Iron Curtain...
...The United States has not suggested imposing a single economic or diplomatic sanction, such as withdrawal of recognition from Hungary's UN delegation...
...Yet, any such adventure appears highly unlikely...
...This is what the advice of Walter Lippmann and others who fear the Hungarian Revolution really amounts to—that we discourage all anti-Communist activity behind the Iron Curtain and increase trade with that area in order to stabilize it...
...These sanctions should not apply to Poland or Yugoslavia, but to the Soviet Union, China and the loyal satellites which approved and aided the Hungarian aggression...
...But in the meantime we will be increasing ils power to destroy us...
...If the Soviets find their satellites not only a military liability but an economic drain, it will be doubly in their interest to withdraw from Eastern Europe...
...Thus, everything the West can do to keep alive the unrest behind the Iron Curtain is a move away from war, not toward it...
...If the Soviets were to decide on war, it would be in the hope of using their great ground superiority to invade Europe or Asia, gambling that we would not retaliate with nuclear weapons because of the defenseleSs-ness of our own cities...
...The Communists know all too well from the experiences of 1905 and 1917 that Russian revolutions come in time of war...
...One can be described as the "accident theory...
...All these decisions have been contemptuously ignored by the Soviet Union and its Hungarian puppets, yet no sanctions of any sort have been adopted by the UN itself or by any member nation...
...Their denunciations of Moscow's behavior have been eloquent and sincere...
...Yet, it could probably be brought about with a little encouragement from the West...
...The Kremlin knows how many Russian troops defected in Hungary and had to be replaced by Asians...
...If through fear of a phantom war danger we help the Soviets to reestablish their hold in Eastern Europe, they may well take advantage of their strengthened position to attack the West later...
...If the Kremlin goes to war, it will be not by accident but by design...
...Hence, the intervention of German volunteers in an East German revolt could trigger a war only if the Kremlin wanted an excuse for war...
...Nevertheless, we must also remember that overcaution is sometimes just as dangerous as recklessness...
...It is based on the fact that tyrannical governments, when faced tion of Soviet pilots and huge Chinese armies in Korea...
...with discontent at home, sometimes try to distract the people by launching a foreign war...
Vol. 40 • January 1957 • No. 1
