The Bases of U. S. Foreign Policy

...And because the barrier, backed by the United States nuclear deterrent, has worked effectively so far, Western Europe has enjoyed a remarkable period of political stability and economic expansion...

...While British policy has shown great skill and foresight in reaching accommodations with the new forces of political nationalism, the British economy, unfortunately, is not providing adequate resources to meet the demands of economic development in the formerly dependent areas...

...That is the basic reason why Americans are debating so long and so loudly the nature, purposes and limitations of the various instruments and strategies of power...

...There has been one great gain since the Second World War...

...Each step in foreign policy is quickly evaluated by the press, radio and television as either a victory or a defeat...

...the United States is of necessity neutral in this dispute...

...When Britain carried the main load of maintaining a balance of sorts in world power, it could rely on one main weapon—its navy—and until the Haldane reforms it relied on the availability of time and space to improvise land power and alliances as they might be needed...

...Americans in this decade have increasingly come to see that the mere fact of having a foreign policy at all is not an act of special grace toward the outside world...

...The Soviet Union can go all out in supporting Indonesian claims to West Irian...

...This quality, which promotes a relatively high level of service to the community at home, usually has a contrary effect abroad...

...In effect, this same policy has been carried out with more vigor and imagination by his successors...

...The trouble with most of the plans for "disengagement" in Europe is that, while leaving intact Soviet striking power, they may dissolve the political union of the West, leaving each state in weakened isolation to face new Soviet threats...

...In effect, the Secretary of State is a one-man lobby for the wherewithal to- conduct a foreign policy...

...and that is often a lonely position...

...In the first postwar years Stalin concentrated his empire-building efforts against contiguous countries—Greece, Turkey, Iran—and used military pressures to the forefront...

...If the Kremlin decides to deliver arms to Nasser or a steel mill to India, the first instalments can be put on shipboard within a matter of weeks...

...But the assumption that token United States encouragement to economic development would be enough has broken down...

...One of the main difficulties in American policy-making today is, as I have said, the over-emphasis on the military factor...

...Even if some of these policies, such as NATO, have worked fairly well until now, are they going to be adequate in the next few years...

...Today, Moscow's economic development programs in the underdeveloped areas are not much smaller than those of the United States, and they are often operated more flexibly...

...NATO cannot stand still...

...The basic dilemma leads many analysts to place a new emphasis on conventional forces, forces ready to be moved rapidly to any threatened section of the free world...

...Domestic interest groups make their power felt directly through Congressmen and Senators...

...He was formerly director and a professor at Columbia University's Russian Institute...

...What has happened in American political thinking is, I feel, that a traditionally non-military and even anti-military people has had to be persuaded each year that the possession of great military power is essential if it is to speak with a voice that can be heard...

...these forces can be aligned as easily or more so with the anti-Western aims of the Soviet bloc: and this applies to Latin American countries as well as to many Asian and African peoples...

...The gap between the two parts of the free world has been growing wider, not narrower...

...Is the back door of America—the republics of Latin America—secure...

...The Soviet Union can afford to fan anti-Israeli sentiments through its Arab broadcasts, but the Western voice of moderation and compromise has little impact...

...The dilemma of the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" is becoming more acute because of the high birth-rates and the declining death-rates typical today of the underdeveloped countries...

...As a matter of fact, over the past ten years the advanced industrial countries have expanded their economies far more rapidly than the pre-industrial ones...

...What American and British policy has failed to foresee is that the Soviet Union can also make a strong bid to ally itself with the colonial and formerly colonial peoples, thus moving toward its immediate aim—the elimination of Western influences and sympathies from large areas of the underdeveloped regions of the world...

...American policy, f submit, has been shortsighted in failing to support the strategic unification of Western Europe, in contrast to the encouragement it has given to its economic integration...

...But, if we look now to the future, it may well be fatal if, through American and British inaction, each West European ally achieves nuclear power on its own, and achieves it at different times...

...to the stage of an operational tool, the West no longer has a unique advantage...

...This comfortable and comforting assumption no longer holds water...

...They can give easy credits instead of the more humiliating form of grants in aid, or gifts...

...One of these assumptions has been that, with the military, political and territorial support of its allies, the United States could and should build and maintain a nuclear deterrent force, with the necessary delivery systems and bases to back it up—a force adequate to deter the Soviet leadership from exploiting its great superiority in land forces to overrun additional areas in Western Europe...

...policy has not fully realized, is a strengthened, not a weakened, NATO, a NATO equipped to stand off the threat of the Soviet intercontinental missiles when they are ready in operational numbers, perhaps in two or three years...

...Are they being attracted into the Soviet economic orbit, or are they going to play in with the Soviet center of attraction in order to bait Uncle Sam...

...Finally, a special difficulty arises from the American "success story," from the expectation that hard work and good intentions will be rewarded with early and visible success...

...it must grow in strength...

...A fourth assumption has been that nationalism—both old and new—can be built into a strong barrier to the spread of Communist control...

...Will General de Gaulle's future moves strengthen both France and the NATO alliance...

...There is no doubt that the American people would accept vast destruction and even catastrophe at home in order to come to the defense of Great Britain and Western Europe...

...The effect of relatively unselfish and enlightened sacrifices to help other peoples has often been thrown away by the insistence on being "hard-boiled," on proving to the American taxpayer the military gain to be achieved...

...Certainly, Britain has held and exercised far more responsibility and leadership in this field of policy than the United States, and Americans would have been happy to leave in British hands the working out of compromises and adjustments with the nationalist forces in the Middle East, as it has done in Asia and in parts of Africa...

...The reaction to failure, as in the loss of China to Communist control, may well be a retreat from realities into wishful thinking...

...The Eisenhower Doctrine for the Middle East, for example, identified the threat to that area as a military one...

...How much is left of the Eisenhower Doctrine, with the seizure of power in Iraq and the seemingly unending struggle in Lebanon...

...Or will he move to enhance the prestige of France at the expense of both NATO and the movement for European integration...

...Foreign Policy A GREAT MANY Americans, and many of our friends and friendly critics abroad, are deeply worried today over the state of United States foreign policy...

...Hence the paradox of the strongly military overtones in what is basically a defensive and status quo policy...

...Or it may lead to a fresh appraisal and to more vigorous action...

...It also leads to an intensive study of the use of tactical nuclear weapons, designed to compensate for the free world's inferiority in mobilized manpower...

...This is a formidable roster of problems, and I cannot outline the implications of each of them here...

...Politically, economically and strategically, it would be much better for us both to support the development of a regional nuclear deterrent which would include Britain and the European NATO powers...

...A third assumption of American policy has been that the underdeveloped countries, comprising two-thirds of the peoples of the non-Communist world, can gradually increase the rhythm of their economic and social progress if only the advanced countries make some contributions to their efforts...

...A second assumption has been that a strengthened Western Europe would gradually take over most or all of the responsibility for maintaining a firm barrier to Soviet expansion into that vital part of the world...

...When the demand for minerals slackens, as in the first months of this year, a powerful bloc in Congress is on the alert to see that the cutback in lead and zinc falls mainly on foreign producers...

...No time and no space are now available for the powers which are defending the status quo...

...Other forms of power, short of all-out retaliation, thus take on a renewed importance in resisting Soviet-bloc pressures outside Europe...

...The disadvantage of this debate is that American policy often seems completely mesmerized by military power, to its great psychological disadvantage abroad...

...WHAT WE NEED, and it is a need that U.S...

...The Soviet Union can absorb in payment almost any kind of goods, while the American economy cannot...

...To most Americans, foreign policy has become an indispensable instrument for our own survival and for that of our friends and friendly critics throughout the free world...

...American opinion is not aware that, for example, in the recovery of Britain and Western Europe, Marshall Plan aid, though essential, was only a relatively small part of the total effort...

...A second and opposite difficulty is the desire to be liked, and if possible, to be admired and praised...

...American and Western policies are shaped to the real and direct responsibilities their governments bear...

...In other words, the newly independent and developing countries should be assisted, through Point Four and later programs, to find their haven in the free world...

...In any case, the assumption that nationalism is a barrier to Communism, and that the new nationalisms can readily be persuaded to join the free world, is no longer a safe one to make...

...What I am going to try to do is to point to some of the assumptions on which United States policy has rested during the past ten or thirteen years and then to see whether these same assumptions, and policies based on them, are equally useful today...

...If those threats—the threat to bomb London, Paris, Bonn, Rome—have been made frequently over the past two years, before Russia had its missiles fully ready, consider what their impact may be if NATO were meanwhile to be dissolved into a congeries of divided states, with each bargaining for its own safety by appeasing one Soviet demand after another...

...Several Southern states have endeavored to impose special handicaps on the sale of Japanese textiles, even though Japan is the biggest foreign consumer for the South's cotton...

...Now that the Soviet Union also has built a large nuclear force, and may actually prove to be ahead of the West in developing the intercontinental missile Philip E. Mosely is director of studies of the Council on Foreign Relations...

...The great strides which Britain has made in nuclear technology should have been assisted by the United States, just as British science and skill contributed to the wartime achievement of the atom bomb...

...In a time of rapid economic development at home—despite the current recession—and of ominous political instability in many underdeveloped areas, American capital shows little inclination to move into countries of high risk and uncertain returns...

...A third difficulty is the preponderance of domestic interests over national policy...

...And the ambition to develop industrial power is a central drive in the new nationalisms of Asia, Africa and Latin America...

...Europe needs to have its own nuclear forces and delivery-systems, but these should be developed and controlled for defensive purposes by the Western European Union...

...It is painful to need help or to receive help, and the giver should not expect gratitude...

...Yet nuclear power is, I believe, much less likely to be thrown into the political scales in defense of other, politically uncertain, areas of the globe...

...The national interest in security and peace, in friendship with all peoples who want to be friendly, is expressed primarily through the Executive Branch...

...Is the strategic situation changing so radically that America will have to scale down its present commitments to come to the defense of countries threatened by Soviet and Chinese Communist power...

...In Indonesia and Laos, will the Communist bloc achieve power, in whole or in part, by peaceful and parliamentary means...

...Because the Soviet Union has been deterred from expanding by force, many now argue that its leaders never intended to do so in the first place and that we can now weaken NATO or even dismantle it...

...Unfortunately, college football and the American approach to international politics too often show the same psychological intensity, the feeling that all can be won or lost in the next drive to the goal posts...

...However, even before his death, in a pamphlet on Economic Problems of Socialism, published in October 1952, Stalin called for a new policy, stressing peaceful political and economic means, and appealing to peoples far removed from the Soviet frontiers to ally themselves with the Soviet Union in the name of anti-imperialism...

...In the areas beyond its periphery the Soviet propaganda has an easy game, for it counts on some gain from each new conflict or tension...

...What does this mean for the United States and its allies...

...A strengthened Europe can, I believe, maintain a deterrent of its own against Soviet nuclear attack or blackmail, but this requires an active policy by both Britain and the United States, going far beyond the recent American decision to share certain atomic secrets with Britain and to help Euratom realize its plans for developing nuclear energy for industrial uses...

...But there is no overlooking the difficulties which our domestic politics place in the way of defining and pursuing a coherent policy abroad...

...Yet how can the American voters help but regard military programs and foreign aid programs as in competition with domestic demands for their tax dollars...

...Hence, the argument goes, the West must try to work with the new nationalism to help these forces to find their places within a community of free self-governing and self-respecting states...

...The process of recommending, deciding, appropriating money and starting new projects takes many months under American democratic procedures...

...A review of our fundamental assumptions By Philip E. Mosely The Bases of U.S...

...When Americans tell each other that their policies are "hard-boiled" and then expect gratitude and resent criticism from their friends abroad, the confusion is twice confounded...

...In the past fifteen months the Eisenhower Administration has, it is true, secured from the Congress some token recognition of the need for taking greater risks through development loans to projects which cannot meet the requirements of commercial soundness as set by the World Bank and the Export-Import Bank...

...Can a nation today defend itself without risking intolerable destruction...

...In fact, the threat is even more a political, economic and ideological one...

...Year in, year out, the American people has to be reminded that strong defenses are essential, and so each political or economic commitment the United States has undertaken over the past ten years has had to he couched in terms of strengthening our own military defenses or those of the free world...

...As a matter of fact, considering the independence of party members from central control and the power of the Congress to dispose of the Executive's proposals, the record of the last ten years, and especially of the current Congress, is not a bad one...

...The President's proposals—any President's proposals—in the fields of defense and foreign policy are in direct competition with many domestic interests and demands...