Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
WHERE the NEWS ENDS By William Henry Chamberlin The Bipartisan U.S. Peace Policies IT IS OFTEN said that peace will be one of the important issues of the coming Presidential campaign. This is an...
...Because of Paris, they will have to rewrite their script...
...The Democrats would have been in a position to capitalize on the foreign policy issue if they had taken a critical, or at least an aloof, attitude towards the futile venture in personal diplomacy which ended in Paris...
...On balance, Democrats have been friendlier to Israel, Republicans more inclined, if possible, to hold a balance between Israel and the Arab states...
...There is something pathetically naive in a slogan posted on some cars in the academic community where I live: "Elect Stevenson President . . . Prevent Nuclear War...
...But the prevalent opinion of Democratic strategists was that they must not allow their party to be undercut by the Administration on the issue of "peace...
...There is no "war" or "peace" issue between candidates for the nomination or between the two final competitors...
...What the election campaign can and should bring is elaboration of the candidates' views on vital issues of foreign policy...
...The worst crimes and follies of appeasement were certainly committed under the Roosevelt Administration...
...Will they stand firm on exposed outposts like West Berlin, Formosa, Korea...
...A Republican Congress backed President Truman in his stand against the Soviet threat to Turkey and Greece and voted appropriations for the Marshall Plan...
...Republicans have been more wholehearted in their support of the Chinese Nationalists...
...Are they immune to the disease of summitry...
...There are some nuances of difference in the attitudes of the two parties toward foreign affairs...
...We were not prepared, under either Administration, to take the political and military risk of initiating a war of liberation for the captive peoples...
...However, it seems quite probable that during the coming months the Chinese Reds will behave in such a way that it will be extremely difficult for a Democratic Administration to depart from the present nonrecognition policy...
...But the Democrats, who went along with summitry, and some of whose leaders still seem to be under the curious delusion that there is some intrinsic virtue in top-level talk regardless of whether there is any common ground of discussion, are hardly in a position to say, I told you so...
...It is mere conscienceless demagogy to suggest that one of the big American parties is a "'war party" and the other a "peace party...
...The Republicans supported the war in Korea, although with some reservations as to the self-imposed limitations under which it was fought and to the treatment of General Mac-Arthur...
...The uprising in the Soviet Zone of East Germany in 1953 and the more tragic and hard-fought revolt in Hungary in 1956 were allowed to pass without action...
...But since 1946, when there was bipartisan agreement on the need to stand firm against further Communist aggression, the differences between the two parties in foreign policy have been relatively minor...
...And British voters, inveterate wishful-thinkers where Soviet designs are concerned, gave Macmillan a handsome vote of confidence...
...This is the sort of thing citizens should try to find out...
...In the same way the Administration was probably influenced by what happened in England...
...The next President, whoever he may be and whatever party he belongs to, will do all in his power, consistent with national security and honor, to preserve the peace...
...But Macmillan blurred and softened the issue and set in motion a sequence of events: the conference of foreign ministers, Khrushchev's visit to the United States, the invitation to Eisenhower to visit Russia, the arrangement of the summit meeting in Paris...
...Prime Minister Harold Macmillan went to Moscow but did not get a withdrawal of Khrushchev's insolent and provocative demand for removal of Western troops from West Berlin...
...Under Truman and under Eisenhower the same principle prevailed and we were committed by a network of alliances, that began under Truman and advanced and developed under Eisenhower, to resist armed Communist aggression in Europe and Asia...
...John Foster Dulles was more blunt and outspoken, more insistent on German rearmament, less tied to the psychological and emotional apron-strings of the Roosevelt era, but there was little practical difference between Democratic "containment" and Republican "liberation...
...For, if there is one sure thing in international politics, it is that nuclear war, should such a calamity occur, would either be touched off by a surprise Soviet attack, or by an act of Soviet or Red Chinese aggression...
...The Republicans envisaged themselves as able to pull off a similar stunt here and retain the Presidency by the attractive slogan: Peace and Prosperity...
...Will they link disarmament with foolproof inspection...
...This is an oversimplification: No candidate in his right mind would go to the American people as an advocate of war...
...The Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policy differed from the Truman-Acheson more in method than in substance...
Vol. 43 • June 1960 • No. 26
