WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?
What Are We Waiting For? THE Truman Administration's failure to launch a great new crusade for peace during the past month seems to The Progressive one of the most appalling tragedies of our tragic...
...THE Truman Administration's failure to launch a great new crusade for peace during the past month seems to The Progressive one of the most appalling tragedies of our tragic times...
...and the U.S.S.R...
...i This is why The Progressive is: convinced that Mr...
...The Progressive is convinced that it is Mr...
...If the analysis is correct—that Russia's behavior is based on fear and an inferiority complex where we are concerned, certainly the development of deadlier bombs will not dissolve that fear, but strengthen it...
...2) Czechoslovakia tied tightly to the U.S.S.R...
...Maybe this will be the thing to do sometime...
...Truman himself expressed somewhat the same view recently, although in this respect he was flatly contradicting some of the sentiments expressed by both himself and Mr...
...table talk between Russia and the) West in which an attempt would be made to clear away some of the'i psychological conflicts of the past...
...nor can he "know" the inside story, as does Mr...
...III Mr...
...The Progressive concurs heartily in the proposals advanced by Sen...
...Truman must: act—and act at once—to invite Mr...
...Nothing could be farther from the truth...
...5) repeated failure to reach agreement on peace settlements for Austria, Germany, Korea, and Japan...
...President...
...What are we waiting for...
...The Progressive concurs, heartily, too, in the far-sighted suggestion of Sen...
...Acheson a few days before...
...Instead, the President of the United States handed a tense and expectant world a statement of almost brutal bareness announcing that he had decided to launch the productive genius of America on the development of a new and ghastlier weapon—the hydrogen bomb, whose destructive power knows no boundaries in space or time or terror...
...The Soviet press has made this clear enough, and recently the New York Times frontpaged a dispatch from its Moscow correspondent which reported: "The Soviet Government, in the opinion of some Moscow diplomatic quarters, is prepared today—and in fact has been prepared for the last year—to meet with the United States in a two-power effort to solve the major problems confronting both countries, including the question of atomic controls...
...Why not now—today...
...Truman's raised their voices to plead for a more constructive approach than the purely negative course of launching a new race to destruction...
...Truman, of Soviet behavior at sessions of UN agencies...
...The dispatch goes on to point out that the Soviets are not too sanguine about the prospect of settlement, which is understandable enough, and then records this curious comment: "The differences in viewpoint between the United States and the Soviet Union, it is felt, are too profound to be conciliated without long and serious efforts by both sides...
...In an exclusive interview with Arthur Krock, chief of the Wash* ington Bureau of the New York Times, the President said: "The real trouble with the Russians is that they are still suffering from a complex of fear and inferiority where we are concerned...
...It is a fact of life today that America and American policy are not nearly so popular in the rest of the world as we have kidded ourselves into believing...
...The time to act is now...
...Both the President and his Secretary of State magnanimously refrained from actually denouncing those who took the nobler and more hopeful view, but they did try to plant the impression that speeches like those delivered by Sen...
...Truman may say, as he did in a recent press conference in which he lamely sought to justify his failure to take the initiative for peace, that anyone who reads recent history must know that we have tried repeatedly to persuade the Soviets to a reasonable program of agreement...
...The cause of this unhappy tendency to lump the U.S...
...Of course it will take long and serious efforts...
...Millard Ty-dings, chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, were so much well-meaning idealism too far removed from the facts of life to be deserving of serious attention...
...Stalin to discuss directly the over-, all misunderstandings which flow from fear, suspicion, and mistrust, as a prelude to the more detailed examination of specific issues...
...have found some basis for a Kve-and-let-live settlement...
...M.HJ...
...During the weeks that followed, men whose records of anti-Communism and party regularity are as impeccable as Mr...
...6) the Chinese Communists move relentlessly toward total power...
...4) Eastern Germany become a garrisoned outpost of the Soviet Union...
...During the four years of our greatest "strength"—when we and we alone possessed a stock' pile of atomic bombs—we failed completely to win anything resembling major concessions from the Soviets...
...II It may be true, as Mr...
...Both programs, however, tffugl wait on something less tangible bi^ more meaningful—an across-the...
...The people of Europe and Asia are realists...
...Brien McMahon, chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, and Sen...
...Truman and Mr...
...Still, the decisive fact remains that by failing to take the initiative, we dilute the confidence and weaken the support of peoples who ought to be our friends, and thus we play squarely into the hands of the Politburo...
...Tydings that the United States call on all the nations of the world to join with us in a supreme effort to achieve total disarmament...
...They know, as do the officials of the UN who have said so, that for the present they can only mark time—that there can be no conclusive settlement of any of the thousand and one problems facing the UN until the U.S...
...3) the last vestiges of freedom disappear from such Soviet satellites as Hungary, Rumania, and Poland...
...The fact is that the average European or Asiatic isn't and can't possibly be so intimately informed on recent American history as is Mr...
...If a campaign had not been in progress in 1948, I would have sent Chief Justice Vinson to try to straighten out Stalin and the other Russian leaders on this and our real intentions...
...The "plague o' both your houses" mood which envelops a discouragingly large part of the world is bitter testimony to the fact that on the moral and spiritual level, the United Sates does not rate much higher in world opinion than does the Soviet Union...
...But considering the enormity of the stakes and considering the simple fact that this split overshadows every other issue of our time, is it asking for too much to expect "long and serious efforts by both sides" at this decisive moment in world history...
...Their horizons have shrunken to the point where all their thinking and planning in the realm of world politics are bounded by their convictions 1) that strength and strength alone will enable the American position to prevail in the world, and 2) that the peoples of the world, especially those in countries we like to think are our friends and allies, know that we are dedicated to the preservation of peace...
...But the Administration sullenly stood pat on its insistence that it was a waste of time and energy to embark on new negotiations for peace with the Soviet Union...
...It seems to us a million-to-one shot that the governments concerned and the UN would agree enthusiastically to such a course...
...and the U.S.S.R...
...Nobody in his right mind thinks that a Truman-Stalin handshake and exchange of smiles some weekend soon will resolve conflicts of the magnitude that divide the two great powers...
...The whole world was waiting for a word of hope—for a sign that we of America were prepared to emerge from our fox-hole of futility and grasp the reins of moral leadership we had so wearily laid aside so long ago...
...This period of American supremacy in material might saw 1) the Soviet Union strengthen its grip on Eastern and Central Europe...
...And just as certainly our refusal to sit down around the table with them will not moderate that inferiority complex, but feed it...
...Acheson who have strayed from the realities of the world in which we live...
...They are only too painfully aware of the fact that the supreme issue of their lives—the issue of war or peace—is being resolved by two great powers, notwithstanding the fact that the smaller nations have seats and voices in the UN...
...McMahon, for a five year, $50,000,-000,000 program of American economic assistance to the world, including Russia, in exchange for an agreement on atomic disarmament...
...If the goal of our foreign policy is peace, as we in America know in our hearts it is, we have done a miserable job of getting that message over to the peoples of the world...
...It is nonsense to pretend, as the Administration does, that direct overtures to Stalin would antagonize the peoples in other countries because we would not be consulting them and because we would be bypassing the United Nations...
...Truman and Mr...
...Acheson affirm so drearily on every possible occasion, that nothing very much could come from peace talks with the Soviets in their present mood...
...In a few months we shall be up to our ears in another political campaign when motives will be suspect and negotiations difficult...
...What strikes us as even more delusive than the notion that only a show of American strength will soften the Soviets is the Truman-Acheson conviction that the peoples of the other countries are aware of the purity of our purpose...
...in pretty much the same category is to be found, in considerable measure, in the recurring failure of the American Government to embark boldly on an all-out offensive for peace which could be heard and understood by the peoples of the world...
...There is every indication that the Soviets would welcome an early conference to discuss terms of a settlement...
...The facts of life show how dangerously deluded the Administration is on both counts...
...preparatory to launching the "long and serious efforts" which are im-^ plicit in the McMahon and Tydings i proposals...
...In the first place, we could and should consult associated nations and the UN...
...Countless reports from Europe and Asia confirm the fact that the peoples of those continents feel themselves trapped in a global duel of threats and arms between two giants...
...Why "sometime," Mr...
Vol. 14 • March 1950 • No. 3
