An Awful Week
NIEBUHR, REINHOLD
World troubles call for U. S. resolution, patience and finesse An Awful Week By Reinhold Niebuhr In one week our nation was inundated with so much bad news and accepted it with such a lack of...
...We are no longer looking for a "world made safe for democracy...
...We have the power and we must exercise the responsibilities of that power...
...Finesse is necessary, for we will be accused of outraging the sovereignty of nations as soon as we engage in overt interference...
...We sent arms to the Lebanese Government, under strong attack by left-wing forces...
...and we cannot even correct the French policy when it is so obviously harmful to our common cause...
...But we need a more perceptive understanding of the hazards of international intercourse, of the mixture of motives in the attitudes of all nations, and patience with the inevitable frustrations which even the most powerful nations encounter, particularly when they must play their part and exercise their responsibilities in a global community of nations...
...Let us not make the mistake of attributing all these adverse fortunes to errors of the Eisenhower Administration, and thus repeat the error of the Republicans who held the Tru-man-Acheson policy responsible for the loss of China...
...We might also remember that gratitude is not within the moral competence of nations for both good and bad reasons...
...We do not need a "new morality" to guide the destinies of the non-Communist world and to escape disaster...
...the charge that we favored the dictators against the democratic forces...
...We can obviously not be the dictators of the free world...
...But, above and beyond detailed policies, we must be prepared for a long pull in world leadership and prepared to hear the resentments against our power which will develop as much if we make no mistakes as if we make mistakes...
...Those of us who have been critical of John Foster Dulles might also remember that, before the roof fell in, our NATO allies came to share his conviction that a summit conference now would be dangerous...
...World troubles call for U. S. resolution, patience and finesse An Awful Week By Reinhold Niebuhr In one week our nation was inundated with so much bad news and accepted it with such a lack of hysteria that one has the complacent impression that we have grown since the McCarthy era...
...Perhaps the only clear line out of our dilemma is that we should establish a closer partnership with Britain, which has proved wiser than France in liquidating its empire...
...The highest moral competence of nations is an enlightened policy which will be equally advantageous to us and to our allies...
...To fill our cup of woe to the brim, there was the news of the launching of the third Sputnik, proving the Russian scientists had developed sufficient fire-power to lift a ton-and-a-half into orbit...
...The good reason is that no allegedly "generous" action of a nation, for which gratitude is expected, will seem quite as generous to the recipient of aid as to the giver...
...In the course of a single week, we saw the following ominous developments: • Vice President Nixon's tour of Latin America revealed the depth and breadth of the animus against us in Latin America...
...The animus was compounded of many factors: resentments against our tariff policy, the effects of our recession on the Southern neighbors...
...We could do many things which we have not done...
...for our high tariffs may alienate Japan as well as Latin America...
...the feeling against us in Venezuela because we offered asylum to its ex-dictator, and a dozen other grievances...
...China promised the Indonesian Government arms, while we remained "meticulously correct" in the Indonesian civil war, giving neither side aid, though the rebels were obviously more sympathetically disposed to the West than President Sukarno's Government...
...The French crisis grew so ominous that no one can he sure whether the Republican Government can maintain itself against the Gaullist peril, supported by the Army and the colons of Algeria...
...This achievement surpasses even our fondest dreams for our Explorers...
...In this hegemonous position, we will face many problems for which there are no abstract solutions such as the Eisenhower "doctrine...
...We might be less complacent about the Latin American dictatorships and try to aid the democratic forces of South America with more resolution and finesse...
...If all our misfortunes prove anything, it is that the "imperial" responsibilities of our nation are not compatible with an abstract anti-imperialism...
...We seem destined to bear the burdens of world hegemony for a long time and to contest with a very resourceful foe...
...Furthermore, the Russian-Egyptian accord made nonsense of the British Labor party thesis that Eisenhower's policy in the Suez crisis would give him "moral authority" over Nasser...
...The recipient will shrewdly suspect that all national actions are partly actuated by national interest...
...Nasser and the Kremlin came to a touching accord...
...We are reduced to the more modest ambition of trying to escape disaster, either in the shape of an ultimate war or in capitulation to the most resourceful despotism in human history...
...Thus, pretensions to generosity in international affairs are almost as great a hazard to an understanding between nations as ingratitude...
...We would do well to follow the bipartisan leadership for more reciprocal trade...
Vol. 41 • June 1958 • No. 22
