Asia-The Next Battleground
JR., ARTHUR SCHLESINGER
Asia—The Next Battleground Foreign Policy: The Next Phase. By Thomas K. Finletter. Harper. 202 pp. $3.50. Reviewed by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Professor of American history, Harvard University;...
...The point I am making is that war of any kind must be the very last resort and that even the most limited of wars must be thought of as possible only to carry out our obligations under the UN charter and only when the UN action is initiated by the affected countries of Asia...
...the United States can't expect blithely to intervene at times and places of its own choosing: "A Western country," he writes, "has no right to make limited war in Asia unless properly authorized...
...While Finletter agrees that we should increase our limited-war capability, he is plainly skeptical whether the Russians will initiate a limited war, where such a war could be fought, and how it could be kept limited...
...The Russians and Chinese, having been more or less blocked in Europe, are now trying to cash in on the anti-colonial revolution sweeping the underdeveloped areas of the world...
...The crucial area for this offensive, he believes, lies in Asia, "the next battleground in the cold war...
...and an affirmative policy in our own land in such areas as civil rights which would earn us the night to talk about freedom and opportunity to the underdeveloped world...
...His new book, with its trenchant, illuminating and somewhat sardonic discussion of our nation's international prospects, is only the latest contribution of this high-minded and tough-minded man to the understanding of foreign affairs...
...Finletter's view in Foreign Policy: The Next Phase is that a number of events—preeminent among them the loss of American air-atomic supremacy—have radically altered the problem of American security...
...While Finletter repeatedly stresses that "military policy alone is far from the totality of the problem of our national security," his remarks on defense strategy are, as one would expect, particularly informed and cogent...
...Finletter, who has been among the most eloquent advocates both of the Strategic Air Command and of an all-out try at world disarmament, combines the realism and the idealism which have marked the American style in foreign policy at its most characteristic and effective...
...a revision of our rigid and sterile policy toward China...
...a shift in emphasis from military to economic aid...
...It is sad at this point to reflect on what a distinguished United States Senator he would have made...
...To this end, he calls for multilateral action in Asia, working through the United Nations and consulting continually with Asian governments...
...We must come to terms with this revolution both to revitalize our system of alliances and to prevent the absorption of Asia within the Communist empire...
...The only hope, he contends, if we wish to avoid either war or Communist victory, is to get speedily on the political and economic offensive...
...Most important perhaps is his muted but unmistakable dissent from the current fashionable thesis—recently advanced, for example, by General James Gavin—that the limited war should be the center of our strategic calculations...
...author, "Age of Jackson," "Crisis of the Old Order" FEW CITIZENS of our time have served the republic more ably or devotedly than Thomas K. Finletter...
...Finletter conducts a scathing examination and critique of our Asian policy—its unilateralism, its obsession with military tactics and military treaties, its persistent misunderstanding of the real issues in the underdeveloped world...
...and practically today this means only as part of a UN force acting under a UN resolution...
...Between 1940 and 1953, he had a distinguished record as a public official in a variety of posts...
...As a private citizen since 1953, he has offered incisive and responsible comment on a variety of national issues...
...We need, he declares, "a new kind of alliance with the peoples of Asia, an alliance which will not be military, which will not be written, but will be held together by a common devotion to individual freedom and human rights in a common abomination of war...
...The Democratic party, in rejecting men like Thomas Finletter in New York and Chester Bowles and William Benton in Connecticut in favor of undistinguished political hacks, is threatening to cut itself off from the moral and intellectual base which has been responsible for so much of that party's energy and appeal in the last generation...
...And he points out that the political framework of such a war is all-important...
...Asia—The Next Battleground Foreign Policy: The Next Phase...
Vol. 41 • September 1958 • No. 33
