The Failure of U.S. Diplomacy

...One of their conditions always turns out to be the elimination of Western military power from the continent of Europe...

...Perhaps this narrow margin of our safety is the hard fact which no politician dares to acknowledge...

...They had, perhaps unwisely, taken the law into their own hands, because we were indifferent to the plight of the whole European economy which was under threat of a new Egyptian imperialism in the Middle East posing as an "anti-colonial" force...

...The degree of the catastrophe exceeds the exposure of the vanity of personal diplomacy which has now been sufficiently discussed and recognized...

...but we now know not only that there are similarities in the vulgarities of the two mass cultures, but also that an oligarchic rule has initial advantages in stemming the pressure of "consumer demand" against all policies which national security and collective well-being enjoin...

...and no pleas from our friends to let them remain until a United Nations force could take over in the dangerous Middle Eastern situation could influence our righteous adhesion to the principles of that moral law...

...Nor can we forget that just four years ago we allowed our Russian "allies" and the Afro-Asian bloc, under the leadership of the ineffable Krishna Menon, to dominate our policy to the embarrassment of our French, British and Israeli allies...

...and all political parties have accepted the standards of the almost universal "welfare state...

...The "humanistic" part of our tradition has equal difficulty in implementing the values of Western humanism in the intricacies of a technical civilization...

...I frankly do not see the road ahead on the vexing problem of disarmament, but I think our politicians should be more candid in defining the complexities of the problem...

...Even on the political level both parties in this country have been wanting in arousing the nation from its complacency...

...Both explanations do not plumb the depths of the predicament which is, in fact, so deep that both Communists and non-Communists must find ways of obscuring its dimensions...

...and also Okinawa, which we wrested from Japan for strategic reasons and govern with only minimal democratic safeguards...

...Why did we not realize that under the new friendship with Japan there was a subterranean resentment against our domination of Japanese policy, against wresting Okinawa from Japanese sovereignty, against dropping the first atomic bomb on a Japanese city, against prohibition of trade with mainland China, and against the neutralism and pacifism enforced through the MacArthur Constitution, which has now become the instrument of the Japanese left-wing intellectuals and radical labor leaders...

...The impulse of survival dictates such a course...

...It is already in effect...

...The Russians have an easy answer to this tragic dilemma: They do not want a nuclear war, "the imperialists and militarists" of the West do want it...

...We have made our living standards the envy, despair and source of contempt of the whole poor world...

...but the "growing strength" of the "Socialist camp" will prevent such a catastrophe...

...Our own strategy of reassurance is somewhat similar, despite our embarrassment of a free press...

...Clearly it is not merely personal diplomacy which has failed, but the whole structure of American diplomacy in all those parts of the world where American power impinges...

...Many of us were outraged some time ago when the French intellectuals suggested that there was little to choose between American or Russian technocracy...

...Yet months of patient negotiations with the Soviets have proved abortive—and not necessarily because we rightly insist on an adequate inspection system and because the Russians pretend to believe in immediate and complete disarmament...

...The fact is that all historical experience proves that disarmament is not the cause, but the fruit, of relaxed tensions...

...But the religious communities have done little to make the warning relevant and meaningful in a culture in which high creature comforts must be taken for granted and which shares with all the ages the inability to equate comfort with happiness...

...We have done much to protect the humanity of the person against the perils of technical collectivism...

...As a nation we have extolled the virtues of freedom and then made freedom synonymous with the right of anyone to pursue his own ends and comforts without regard for either our domestic or international responsibilities...

...Meanwhile, in our complacency, we allowed the Russians to outstrip us in space technology, in increased productivity and in political prestige, without which the Tokyo riots would be inexplicable...

...For, clearly, we are negotiating not from strength but from weakness...

...A lurid light is thrown on the whole international situation, revealing the failure of American leadership in the cause of the so-called free world...

...We ordered all three allies to quit Egypt "forthwith...

...Among the moral standards of our culture, we supposedly prize the warning that "life consisteth not in the abundance of things a man possesses...

...It may be that the only hope of escaping a nuclear catastrophe is by the implicit, rather than explicit, agreement of both sides not to use the dread instruments...

...The President visited Korea too, where a dictatorial Government has been overthrown by a student revolt...

...But we have not done as well in guarding the "humanities" against the perils of vulgarization arising from the minimal standards enforced in "mass communications"—in television, moving pictures and cheap literature...

...for even the most violent quarrels have not yet prompted either side to grasp or use the ultimate weapon...

...Since all of us are overcome with dizziness when peering into an abyss, the populace of both sides finds it convenient to develop a "will to believe," or a "suspension of skepticism," when reassured about the nature of the dilemma in their own propaganda...

...Ascetic poverty in an economy of abundance is certainly no way of heeding the warning...

...While tensions are high, every disarmament negotiation turns out to be an effort of both sides to preserve or to improve its total power position...

...We pride ourselves on the traditions of the "Christian West...

...Diplomacy America's negotiations from weakness not from strength reflect complacency and a vast neglect of our 'humanistic' tradition By Reinhold Niebuhr The cancellation of President Eisenhower's trip to Japan, coming after the summit conference debacle, has accentuated the catastrophic character of the American defeat in the world situation...

...Nor have we done too much to guard the qualitative dimension of the culture against the purely quantitative standards...

...There is, of course, no guarantee against catastrophe through miscalculation...

...Our policy was partly dictated by the naive assumption that the United Nations was a super-government and that loyalty to it corresponded to the requirements of what John Foster Dulles was pleased to call "the moral law...

...Whatever the merits of a Democratic Administration, there are problems of a moral and cultural nature in our nation which a political program alone cannot cure...

...In his recent autobiography, Full Circle, Anthony Eden gives the whole sad case of our political and moral confusion...

...In both parties, even the most liberal voices have joined the chorus of those who assume that disarmament negotiations and agreements, looking to the elimination of a nuclear holocaust, are rather simple achievements...

...The implied neutralism of that judgment, when applied to the political sphere, may still be perverse, for it makes no distinction between freedom and the moral and cultural hazards of an oligarchic rule...

...One must add the term "so-called" advisedly, particularly when the President has basked in the grateful enthusiasm of the police state which governs Taiwan by grace of the American fiction that it is the rightful Government of the great nation of China, the real Government of which is Communist...

...Our answer is that we do not want war and that "public opinion" in the world will soon convince the Russians of the necessity of an inspection system...

...Ironically enough, this signal failure of the Administration to gauge the moral and political realities of the world situation contributed to the Administration prestige and insured Eisenhower's election for a second term in presiding over the destinies of a rich and fat nation which had some vague sense of our world responsibilities, but wanted, in any case, to be left alone to enjoy its prosperity and its sense of virtue...