The Eisenhower Doctrine

...Everything in general and nothing in particular THE EISENHOWER DOCTRINE By Reinhold Niebuhr At the height of the Suez crisis, the London Economist, which supported Washington's position rather than that of Sir Anthony Eden, wryly remarked that American policy was to affirm responsibility for the world but not to have a policy for any particular part of it...

...Individual statesmen have their peculiar weaknesses and virtues, and different eras have their own peculiar moods...

...Political naivete could hardly be more extreme...

...As one Senator noted, the Middle Eastern nations are rich in "liquid assets...

...Therefore, the very threat of force from us bears the connotation of "massive retaliation," and our pacifism in immediate situations is ominously joined with threats of total war...

...Since Russia is doing very well by subversion in Syria and by arrangement in Egypt, nothing is more unlikely than military aggression by Russia, and nothing is more irrelevant than the promise of military support, particularly when it is added that we will come to the assistance of Middle Eastern nations only on the request of their governments...

...But a simple moralism is always pathetic when it obscures the power realities which underlie moral issues...

...The latter job should not be too difficult, even though the British mistakenly thought it would be easy to bring Nasser down in Egypt itself...

...Then there is the Arab refugee problem...

...Israel will have the consolation of praise from our President for being more "moral" than Russia, because she heeded a UN resolution, but she would probably prefer security to praise under such circumstances...

...The vagueness of our policy was accentuated when assurances were given at the Senate hearings that we would not station troops in the Middle East...

...Therefore, the best thing to do is to write a check and threaten to send the corner policemen if the boys do not behave...

...It has its own validity, and I would say nothing to discredit the "Point Four" approach...

...It is true that her army is superior to the surrounding forces, but if the Arab world were united and armed against her Israel would be lost...

...Although no such guarantees have been given, we nevertheless joined with Russia and her cohorts in ordering Israel out...

...The doughty Israelis have thus far been tardy in acceding to this...

...Recently, the United Nations intimated that if Israel got out, the UN Emergency Force would take over the Gaza Strip and the Gulf of Aqaba...

...Not one clear word has been spoken by the Administration about our stake in Israel's survival...

...The Eisenhower Doctrine, it seems to me, is a perfect demonstration of the validity of this observation...

...We are trying to force her out of Egypt before she can win any of the guarantees required for her very existence...

...It promises military assistance to any nation threatened by Soviet military power...

...Menon has solemnly reminded the Assembly that such a strategy for the Emergency Force would require "renegotiation" with Nasser...

...Furthermore, the UN could coerce Britain and France only because the United States furnished the force of coercion by threatening to cut off oil supplies to its allies...

...it required a great deal of arm-twisting by Senator Hubert Humphrey to persuade the Administration to ship oil before the two countries had obeyed the "forthwith" resolution absolutely...

...The economic program presented under the Eisenhower Doctrine does not offer specific amounts to specific nations for the settlement of refugees...

...Her invasion of Egypt was probably more justified than any other...

...It is supposed to "fill the power vacuum" in the Middle East...

...There are, in short, a multitude of detailed problems in this power vacuum...

...It is further made apparent when one considers that we do not have the military equipment to wage local wars...

...There are no pat solutions for any one of them...

...We did nothing about this problem in the past, and are doing nothing now...

...The only nation which could possibly be threatened in this manner is Iraq...

...There is also some disappointment that our common cause with Russia in the Suez affair should not have gone further toward winning the Asian nations...

...we only have atomic superiority for the ultimate war...

...Even Turkey, which may or may not be in the vaguely defined "region," and which is, in any case, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is not immediately imperiled by military aggression...

...Menon, was adamant on that point —in order to assert our "moral leadership" and, perhaps, to assert our offended majesty...

...The British wanted it in order to make us responsible for the fate of Europe...

...That something could be the contrast between the power and comfort of this nation and the troubles and turmoils of the world at large, as well as the remoteness of the great seat of power from the trouble-spots on which our power impinges...

...This is the extension of the "idealistic" approach to backward nations...

...We certainly ought not to make the mistake of building up Nasser's prestige elsewhere in the Islamic world...

...Perhaps Israel ought not have been planted in this troubled world with its patchwork of tawdry nations, but it will certainly be a greater mistake to abandon her...

...The Washington officials seemed to feel that a dictator, who had gone very far by inordinate demands, would suddenly moderate these demands in gratitude to the President who had bailed him out of recent difficulties...

...Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, like Mr...

...We wanted it in order to express our responsibility to the world without assuming any particular responsibilities...

...But when an idealistic Democratic internationalist with an academic background, reigning almost a half century ago, proves to have similarities with a current Republican President with a military background, one may justifiably surmise that the common elements they share are prompted by something in the national situation...

...When a small nation is fighting for its existence and is unaided because a fog obscures the vision of the greatest of the powers, one is grateful for a little realism...

...The British failed in their intention, and another world war was required to draw us out of our isolation...

...In this program of economic aid, no attempt is being made to tackle the unsolved problems which led to the stormy events of 1956...

...Europe's undue dependence on Middle Eastern oil has been made only too vivid in the last year—not only to us, but to the oil monarchs and to Colonel Nasser, who are fully aware of their new power to control the vital sustenance of the European economy, and are using that power...

...The combination of Eisenhower's moralism, which expresses itself in universal benevolence without regard for strategic necessities, and Dulles's formalism, which makes simple distinctions between nations which obey the "moral law" and those which do not, might well ruin the prestige of the United Nations by investing it with promises which it cannot fulfil...

...Edward Buehrig, in his excellent book Woodrow Wilson and the Balance of Power, elaborates the thesis that Wilson and the British wanted the League of Nations for quite contrary reasons...

...The Eisenhower policy has two general lines of attack...

...Indeed, we did not even grant relief to Europe as quickly as we might have...

...We have not insisted, though we might have, that the Jordan project become a part of the new economic-assistance program...

...Instead of offering unspecified and unvouchered aid to the governments of the Middle East, it would have been more sensible to project a large program for the building of super-tankers to bring oil around Africa and from the American continent...

...If she yields now, as she probably must, not only will she sacrifice the last chance of real security, but the West will lose the chance of building an alternative pipeline, which would be possible if the UN neutralized the Gulf of Aqaba...

...We emerged from that war with so much power, and are so remote from the trouble-spots of the world where our power impinges, that we have merely drifted into another version of the old vagueness, and have adopted new methods for being responsible in general without being responsible in any particular problem...

...By an overwhelming majority, composed of the Arab-Asian, American and Soviet contingents, with France alone coming to Israel's defense, the General Assembly again voted to order Israeli troops out of the two strips Israel was holding until she could get satisfactory guarantees from Egypt on the free passage of shipping, and security from attack through a UN occupation of Gaza...

...We ought both to guarantee Israel and to prevent the unity of the Arab world under Nasser...

...The United Nations can act effectively against small nations when the big powers agree, but it can do nothing against either Russia or America...

...Israel is still insecure...

...One has the uneasy feeling that our vagueness is not merely the particular weakness of the Eisenhower Administration, but that we are witnessing the re-emergence of a perennial flaw in American foreign policy...

...The "moral influence" theory in international relations has an ultimate validity in the sense that issues of right and wrong are ultimately potent...

...Everything must be cleared with Nasser: Was he not the innocent victim of aggression...

...Here is Chou En-lai talking hysterically about the imperialists and monopolists just as if we did not have a President who took time out from leading the alliance of free nations in order to join India's V. K. Krishna Menon in the task of bridge-building between tyranny and democracy...

...The danger of Soviet ruthlessness is well understood, but so are the perils of our amiable and complacent stupidity...

...Perhaps that is why we have lost almost as much prestige in Europe through recent events as the Russians have...

...We are "idealistic" enough to feel responsible, powerful enough to feel frustration when the power does not solve all problems—and so comfortable that we don't like to be bothered...

...The Arab nations, particularly Egypt, prefer the refugees unsettled, in order to exacerbate animosities against Israel...

...Meanwhile, all the real and unsolved problems of aggression remain...

...The United Nations has ineffectually tried to persuade the Arab governments to settle many of the refugees in their vast and underpopulated domains...

...The second part of the Eisenhower Doctrine is presumably "realistic" rather than "idealistic...

...For years we have had a project ready for Jordan Valley development, but the Arab nations have refused to participate because this would involve cooperation with Israel—a nation which in their eyes does not have a right to exist...

...but it does not touch any of the particular power problems which produced the Mideast crisis in the first place...

...But it is idle to leave them all unsolved while we propose the grand solution of economic aid and military support...

...And must we not prove to him that we are obedient to the moral law...

...But Israel must get out before the promise is fulfilled, and meanwhile Mr...

...Thus he obscured the flaw in the UN Charter (a flaw, incidentally, which cannot be remedied by constitutional changes...

...If we are going to be the Rome of the modern era, we ought at least to apply ourselves more assiduously to the arts of dominion, and learn that grand strategy without tactical skill is worth nothing...

...and it is still the official doctrine that to grant her arms would aggravate the arms race...

...One must report in this context the President's remarkable explanation of the contrast between the effectiveness of the United Nations in ordering Britain and France out of Egypt and its ineffectiveness in ordering Soviet troops out of Hungary...

...these threats do not come from the USSR but from its pawns...

...In every case, power-political realities are being obscured by moralism...

...A recent dispatch from Washington expresses the official disappointment at Nasser's continued recalcitrance...

...The first is the promise of economic assistance to Middle Eastern nations...

...Nevertheless, this approach solves nothing in the Middle East, with its oil-rich monarchs and its poverty-stricken peoples...

...How irrelevant this grand solution becomes was shown on January 19, when we witnessed the ultimate in confusion in the United Nations...

...Eisenhower explained that our allies were moral nations and the Russians were not moral enough to heed the opinion of mankind...

...It's a hell of a way to exercise responsible dominion in a troubled, world...