The Forces of Our Times

...And if, as I believe, by using our wide range of political and economic resources we can at least help shape a more rational and prosperous world community, we must make an effort to understand these fundamental forces...

...Nor has any period offered such exhilarating opportunities for the individual to grow, for his dignity to become a reality, and for human energies to be released for the common good...

...Does it create a feeling of individual participation, of increasing social justice...

...In many of the new and awakening countries, an explosive gap exists between the privileged landlord and business groups on the one hand, and the peasant and worker groups on the other...

...In many ways the ability to deal intelligently with the transformation of Asia, Africa and Latin America is the greatest challenge the United States must face in this decade...

...In 13 years we have seen Communist China emerge as the paramount power in East Asia: a dynamic, land- and resource-hungry nation with an exploding population and traditionally expansionist objectives...

...At the same time, the President has laid the foundation for a safeguarded and effective world-wide disarmament program, bringing the State Department, Pentagon and Atomic Energy Commission together on a common national arms control policy, under the leadership of a newly formed Arms Control and Disarmament Agency...

...It represents a serious challenge not only to the foodsurplus nations of Southeast Asia, but also to the Soviet Union with its vast expanse of potentially productive and underpopulated land adjacent to China...

...The character and speed of delivery of nuclear weapons make it inevitable that technologists on both sides in the cold war will work overtime, and at forced draft, to outstrip each other...

...We believe that the strength of the kind of world we want lies in diversity and freedom...

...1. The surge of the billion or more people who live in Africa, Asia and Latin America toward a greater measure of freedom, prosperity and opportunity...

...I should like to examine each in turn, therefore, and try to assess its impact on the day-to-day conduct of international relations...

...The ussr poses a relentless threat to the strength of our will, the firmness of our purpose, and the perceptiveness of our intelligence...

...As we strive to cope with these forces, it is essential that we look beyond the day-to-day headlines, abandon sloganizing and our tendency to overpersonalize foreign policy questions, and concentrate on positive ways to deal with world developments in depth...

...4. Our ever-expanding science and technology, most dramatically and ominously reflected in the development of nuclear weapons...

...Yet each escalation in the arms race makes the problems of achieving disarmament and peace more difficult...

...But why, many Americans ask, should it concern us...

...In Africa the breakup of old colonial empires and the creation of a large number of uncertain new nations provided the Kremlin with a variety of tempting targets...

...and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated...

...The recent 22nd Congress of the Soviet Communist party in Moscow has revealed an increasing rivalry for the leadership of the world Communist movement between Peking and the USSR...

...The speed with which new scientific discoveries are being turned into technological developments —many of which are awesome in their destructive potential—is almost beyond comprehension...

...The core of our dilemma springs from the fact that arms races throughout history usually have ended in war, while unpreparedness and unilateral, unsafeguarded disarmament have always ended in national catastrophe...

...2. The rise of the Soviet Union to its present status as a major military and industrial power bent on extending its influence throughout the world...

...Although the assumed basis for this dispute is ideological, the sources of tension run far deeper...

...It is hard to imagine a greater element of instability...

...Recently, the failure of the Kremlin's indoctrination efforts in Eastern Europe led them to build a wall to keep the East Germans from fleeing en masse from the "workers paradise...

...These, then, are the major external forces that are shaping the history of our times: the revolution of rising expectations, the rise of the Soviet Union and China, and the rapid advances of science and technology...

...Our task is to help the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America toward expanding economic security and opportunity, toward greater social justice and orderly political growth...

...With the single exception of Cuba, Communism has failed thus far in Latin America as well...

...As Thomas Paine once said: "Heaven knows how to set a proper price upon its goods...

...Sometimes they work singly, but more frequently in combination with one another...

...With less than two cultivable acres available for each farm family, with almost no commercial fertilizer, and with a population that is increasing at the rate of 15 million every year, the Chinese Communists face mounting difficulties in feeding their own people...

...It is a challenge to our economic wisdom and social intelligence...

...This sudden awakening is a heady brew which, once tasted, cannot be recorked...

...3. The transformation of mainland China, which is making its growing strength felt not only in Asia but in most other parts of the world...

...An effective tax program can also stimulate productive investment and expand consumption...

...We have no desire or need to control these new nations...

...Indeed, it was not a Communist party congress in Moscow but our own Continental Congress in Philadelphia that lit the fuse of today's explosive global revolution in the name of freedom...

...Implicit in this notion is the assumption that we can buy another country's friendship...

...Although the concept of arming for peace sometimes sounds like a page out of Alice in Wonderland or George Orwell, the alternative—refusing to arm against growing Soviet military power—is even less appealing...

...Only when the Kremlin becomes convinced that it cannot control these potentially decisive, fast-developing continents can we expect to see the fundamental change in Soviet policy that will make possible an easing of the cold war...

...Of the countries in Asia in which the Communists launched revolutions in 1948—the Philippines, Indonesia, French Indochina, Malaya, Burma and India —they achieved success only in Indochina, where they were able to organize a united front against a lingering white colonial power...

...In both areas during the past year we have made progress...

...And President Kennedy's Alliance for Progress offers a positive opportunity to eliminate the conditions of poverty and injustice in which Communism best breeds...

...Another vital Chinese need is a large, constant supply of basic natural resources...

...Although we have successfully coordinated our own approach to disarmament, no tangible gains have yet been made in breaking the deadlock with Moscow...

...This interrelation was recognized in the statement apocryphally credited to Lenin: "The road to Paris [i.e., the West] lies through Calcutta and Peking...

...As if these factors were not enough, we can add the deadly picture of uneasy cold war strategists in Moscow and in Washington attempting to psychoanalyze each other's intentions across the iron curtain...

...Does our aid lead to a greater sense of sharing in the recipient country's economic growth...

...The decline of our European allies would be even more acute...

...Although the Communists have been working strenuously and effectively to increase their output of coal and steel, their need for extensive oil production is still largely unmet...

...In addition to our economic stake in the future of these continents, we also have a humanitarian stake: a moral injunction to help lift the burdens of poverty from our fellow human beings...

...This means that Central Asia, once a sparsely populated and largely neglected area, may be the scene of increasing differences between the Soviet Union and China...

...Although the area remains clouded by conflicts, the Kremlin after years of intrigue and investment has no Middle Eastern satellites to show for its efforts...

...At the end of World War II, Stalin—and many Americans as well—were convinced that it was only a question of time before all of Europe from the English Channel to the Urals would drop like a ripe apple into Communist hands...

...It would be suicidal to ignore this basic fact in determining our national policies...

...Communist China has an overriding need for more arable land...

...Or is a head-on conflict between the United States and Peking inevitable...

...say that our objective in the underdeveloped countries is solely to "win friends" for the United States...

...In the same period they have withdrawn from Eastern Austria, and the one-time Soviet monolith has been split severely by Yugoslavia's defection, tiny Albania's savage name-calling and strained relations with Communist China...

...During the past 15 years they have made some monumental political and economic miscalculations...

...Without them it is difficult to justify the contribution which American citizens make through their taxes to promote development abroad...

...The Administration has, for instance, taken several major steps to fulfill Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara's promise to redress the worldwide military balance and make our military establishment "a more effective servant of United States foreign policy...

...Much as cynics and professional realists may deride it, this responsibility stems from our deepest Judeo-Christian values...

...With only 6 per cent of the earth's population in an increasingly antagonistic world, we would rapidly become a garrison state in full retreat from the future...

...As long as this dilemma persists, the central question facing us is how to operate from both perspectives at once, simultaneously pursuing programs for rearmament and practical proposals for arms control...

...Yet the Russians are not 10 feet tall, and it is important that we place the threat that they pose in clearer perspective...

...As for ourselves, one of the major unfinished tasks of American foreign relations is to devise a balanced, long-range China policy that will enable us to deal more effectively with all possible developments...

...Although this wall has created difficulties for us, it has also provided the world with devastating evidence of the ineffectiveness of 15 years of Communist brainwashing...

...And when the Soviet Union attempted to seal off Berlin, we responded with the brilliant Berlin airlift...

...Yet African nationalism has thus far successfully resisted Soviet blandishments...

...And only as we succeed in creating the basis for a working economic partnership with the new states of Africa, Asia and Latin America as free nations, with a common interest in world stability, can we assure our own security...

...The construction of an effective indigenous counterweight to China in both South and East Asia must be of urgent priority on our agenda...

...Do the people feel that the new roads and schools and factories are actually theirs, a product of their aspirations and decisions and labor...

...No period in history has ever provided such awesome dangers...

...The outlook is for an endless series of attempts to unbalance new temporary balances, with overall costs in money and danger projecting upward...

...The very idea is deeply offensive to friendship and nationhood...

...Our purpose is to help them achieve maximum freedom of choice to create their own independent futures within the framework of their own cultures...

...In the immediate postwar period the brutal crushing of non-Communist governments in Eastern Europe alerted the free world to Moscow's expansionist aims...

...More widespread ownership of the land, along with capable rural extension guidance, can bring about increased agricultural production by providing incentives to individual farmers...

...It was not the men in the Kremlin but Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry who outlined the bold political dream that now stirs the hearts of millions in Asia, Africa and Latin America...

...This brings into focus some key questions in regard to the emphasis of our economic assistance...

...Most of these people have won their freedom since World War II and have now come to see that their afflictions—disease, injustice, illiteracy, hunger and poverty—are not part of God's plan for the unfortunate but evils to be fought and overcome...

...In the Middle East, too, Soviet successes thus far have been small...

...The burgeoning Common Market is more dependent than we are on free access to the markets, minerals and petroleum of the developing continents...

...Nor is Europe the only area of Soviet failure...

...Although the sterility of Marxist-Ixninist dogma has been clearly demonstrated, the Soviet Union itself remains a powerful country whose accomplishments find thousands of admirers among the world's less-favored people...

...Unless a breakthrough occurs in the diplomatic exchanges, the perilous elements of surprise, speed, miscalculation and accident will continue to reflect the advancing weapons technology of the next decade...

...This economic and political time-bomb is the single most explosive factor in all of East Asia...

...By then the seriousness of the Soviet threat was sufficiently clear to cause us to depart from tradition by joining with other West European nations in the North Atlantic Alliance...

...Treasury...

...This calls for a wise balance of military capability, national will, and a readiness at all times to negotiate in a meaningful way...

...What is needed are reforms to implement self-help...

...The Soviets' failure to achieve their objective in Europe may be explained by both the Kremlin's errors and our own bold response...

...If we are to keep our rampant science and technology from literally tearing our world to pieces, we must continue our efforts to negotiate...

...The answer is that if the United States were cut off from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it would face grave political and economic isolation...

...Yet it would be seriously wrong to measure our interest in an underdeveloped country solely in terms of its vulnerability to the Communist threat...

...Thus when Russia followed this aggression with its classic thrust toward the Mediterranean through Greece and Turkey, the challenge was met with the Truman Doctrine...

...In retrospect, then, it appears that the Soviets with all their great industrial and military power have reaped a small harvest after an intensive effort to expand their rule...

...Tax reform, too, is more than a matter of increased revenue and social justice...

...Nor would it be reasonable to...

...But we would do well to remember that peace and freedom have never been cheap...

...A noisy Communist minority should not be given the status of a natural resource, like oil or uranium, exchangeable for dollars at the U.S...

...Thus we can see that a horde of 650 million hungry Chinese struggling for a bare existence on the Soviet's 4,500-mile border provides the Kremlin with a basis for uneasiness that goes far beyond differing interpretations of Marx and Lenin...

...Forced back on ourselves, we would be deprived of such essential raw materials as manganese, tin, copper, zinc and rubber...

...Let us consider the implications of Communist China as the Kremlin may see them...

...How do these distant turbulent continents with all their built-in confusions and frustrations affect the security of the United States...

...Guinea, one of their most promising objectives 18 months ago, recently sent the Soviet Ambassador back to Moscow...

...Can this powerful new China be persuaded to adopt a more moderate course...

...Looking out from the Kremlin at their past mistakes, the leaders of the Communist world must harbor some unhappy memories...

...NO PERIOD HAS EVER PROVIDED SUCH DANGERS AND OPPORTUNITIES' The Forces of Our Times By Chester Bowles Wherever we turn in the world today, we see events being shaped and crises being created by four unprecedented forces...

...The United States has an obligation to insist on these measures of genuine self-help which experience shows are essential to orderly political growth...

...As the Chinese move west in search of urgently needed resources, the Soviets are moving east into the same general area in pursuit of expanded opportunities for themselves...

...Had there never been a Marx, a Lenin or a Stalin, we would still be faced with a flood of long pent-up desires in the awakening continents—belatedly riding the same tide of political, economic and social change that has greatly altered our own Western world in the last two centuries...

...Nor do we want to shape them in the image of the United States...

...What must be averted is a Chinese push into the fertile valleys of Southeast Asia...

...But since that time the Communists have gained only one European country, Czechoslovakia, which was seized in a Communist coup in 1948...

...The first steps toward economic development, if misdirected, may actually widen this gap and result in a rising gross national product side by side with rising frustrations and bitterness...

...Still, it would be unrealistic to assume that the Soviet challenge has become less fundamentally dangerous...

...It is a challenge to our toughness as well as our patience with the hopes, fears, irritations, excesses, obstinacy and short-sightedness that inevitably characterize the actions of societies in the throes of national revolution...

...The world is now spending more than $100 billion a year on weapons of destruction, and no end is in sight...

...We followed this with the Marshall Plan to assist Western Europe to emerge from the rubble and create a new industrial base...

...Chester Bowles, a frequent contributor to these pages, is currently serving as Special Assistant to the President on Asian, African and Latin American Affairs...

...It is possible that its ideological setbacks may produce, not necessary mellowness, but a rash determination to make greater efforts in the future, whatever the risks...