A TIME FOR GREATNESS
Rubin, Morris H.
American Foreign Policy-ll A Time for Greatness By Morris H. Rubin AMERICAN foreign policy is founded on fear—the fear that the Soviet Union's aggressive designs will plunge the world into war...
...Against this Soviet strategy the massing of great armies and navies, at bankrupting cost to the West, seems to me to be playing the game precisely as the Kremlin would want us to play it...
...It was no dreaming idealist high in an ivory tower...
...This deeply disturbing analysis of the current mood of the men in the Kremlin is much more than one man's opinion...
...However great may be our own contribution—and it would obviously be greater than most of the rest combined—the program must not be a United States program but a United Nations program...
...Many Americans, whose decent instincts respond warmly and immediately to such an affirmative program, soon draw back with the objection that it all sounds very wonderful, but it will come to nothing because the Russians won't agree to go along with it...
...Obviously there is enough blame for the world's present plight to assign a share to all of us...
...It is a significant reality of 1951 that Soviet forces are nor committed in any of-the tension areas of today...
...The two worlds have drifted dangerously apart in the past five years...
...The future belongs to those who have the vision, the daring, and the creative genius to forge social and ideological instruments to harness the boundless power of atomic energy for the constructive purposes of all humanity...
...The human spirit yearns for moral leadership dedicated to a great and hopeful alternative to the brooding fear which haunts men everywhere...
...There is no magic formula for achieving mutual respect and understanding...
...It would strengthen us where we are weakest today—on the moral1 and ideological fronts of the world struggle...
...There are many wounds in the world, but none more perilous for peace and the survival of civilization than the conflict between the Soviet and Western worlds...
...The fourth essential is over-all agreement to devote a fixed proportion of the men, money, and materials going into the program of any nation to schools, libraries, medical services, and recreational facilities in order to build the kind of healthy society which can make a going concern of its newly rebuilt economy...
...This is the challenge...
...Perhaps they won't...
...They have been warning for months that our runaway rearmament, our coolness toward high-level negotiation with the Soviet?, our insistence that our friends sacrifice such progress as they have made on social and economic levels since the end of World War II in order to spend more and more on military programs, and the unbridled violence of our anti-Communism as America dances to the tune of its least responsible spokesmen, the Mc-Carthy-McCarran crowd—that all these have brought the Soviets perilously close to the conviction that they must strike before we do...
...This was the way so careful a commentator as Pearl Buck put it recently...
...Each has become an armed camp...
...It is my purpose to take so challenging and creative a concept to the proposed meeting of heads of state...
...All nations must contribute on-the basis of their ability to pay...
...Instead of a statesman's dramatic plea for an immediate halt to the armament race, there was a bookkeeper's concern with enumeration of existing arms—while fresh rearmament goes on...
...And an America putting up with a back-breaking burden of rearmament—until inflation brings economic disaster...
...In other words, this must not be a hand-to-mouth relief program, although a measure of immediate relief is necessary, but rather a long-haul program of rehabilitation which will provide the under-developed areas of our world with the agricultural, industrial, and educational plant they require to put them on their feet as self-respecting partners in the world community...
...In Europe, where our Marshall Plan launched us on the right road, we retreated in fear, abandoned the program, and stampeded our friends into diverting their resources and energies to rearmament...
...This, in my judgment, is precisely what the Soviets are playing for-^a Europe ravaged by rearmament and an Asia ignored or rebuffed by the United States...
...But life's experiences show that sometimes men in positions of the highest authority are better able to cut through the tangled growth of accumulated grievances than their subordinates...
...Each is becoming reconciled to the inevitability of the explosion both dread...
...Clearly this is no time for bitter recriminations...
...His course was right, but it didn't go far enough...
...It might demonstrate to the Soviets, even if they don't concur in our proposals, that we are not driven by aggressive designs on them and that we are not acting out the final scene in the Marxist prophecy that capitalism must go to war in a desperate struggle to save itself...
...They provide that a great international fund and agency be established to make available the financial means and technical skills for sound economic rehabilitation throughout the world...
...My criticism of American foreign policy in general and President Truman's newest proposals in particular carries an obligation to propose an affirmative alternative...
...I am prepared to inform the heads of state of the Great Powers that I shall propose to the Congress that the United States pledge itself to make available for such a world program a very considerable proportion of the staggering amount we are presently spending on rearmament—if the nations of the world will agree to embrace a foolproof program of total, universal disarmament, enforced by a system of United Nations enforcement...
...That was the sober conclusion of as pro-American and anti-Communist a publication as there is on the other side of the Atlantic—The London Economist...
...In a time for greatness America has chosen timidity for its role...
...Only by adhering to these principles of self-help and self-determination can we hope for the development of self-respect and self-confidence so vital to any people...
...Two—We agree to confer, nqt for a week-end, or a week, but for however long it takes to do the job —for clearly every other problem we face shrinks into insignificance in the face of the problem of our conference...
...Billed in advance as a great peace offensive designed to capture the imagination and support of the world, the Truman-Acheson proposals turned out to be an earnest, well-intentioned re-packaging of a number of miscellaneous suggestions that have been kicking around the United Nations for several years...
...With this in mind I, as President of the United States of America, have today suggested to the heads of state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Great Britain, and France that we meet together at the earliest possible moment, at a site acceptable to the four of us, to discuss the terms of a program designed to bring peace and prosperity to the world...
...I think I can best meet that obligation by exercising my inalienable right as a free American to petition the President to change his position...
...But suppose the Russians do say no—what will we have lost...
...Last month, in the first installment of this two-part series on American foreign policy, I showed how our fear-ridden policy of relying almost entirely on massive rearmament had hacked deeply and dangerously into our moral and political stature in the world...
...Why, we ought to wonder, should the strategists in the Kremlin want to gamble their Red Revolution on one throw of the dice—atomic war —when they can let bankruptcy in Europe, rampant nationalism in Asia, and economic depression in the United States achieve the gains they seek for themselves...
...They are based in large measure on the principle that disarmament and reconstruction go hand-in-hand...
...We are drifting perilously close to the explosion point in the atomic arms race...
...This shows up in many ways but most important of all in these two critical developments: One—The mounting alarm among our friends and allies that it is we, rather than the Russians, who are more likely to plunge the world into atomic -war...
...Truman ought to make...
...The first essential is that the program be genuinely international in character...
...Only such an approach can foreclose any taint of colonialism or suspicion of Yankee imperialism...
...Two—The growing conviction among the under-privileged two-thirds of humanity that our single-minded concern with military containment of Communism has robbed us of the capacity to understand their revolutionary surge toward a better life and has demoted our promises to help them in their fight for freedom to the lowest rank of expendable commitments...
...I have no intention of handing them a complete blue-print on a take-it-or-leave-it basis...
...I quoted some of it last month, but I want to refer to just a few new warnings here in order to sharpen the outline of the problem confronting us...
...In large measure the present American program is designed for fighting Russia, not for staying at peace by deterring a Russian aggression...
...Louis Post-Dispatch...
...Instead of the hoped-for call for total, mutual disarmament, there was timid talk of reduction of armaments...
...After pointing out that the Soviets are no longer likely to make war to achieve long-run Soviet goals, Harsch draws this somber conclusion: "The Kremlin would reasonably choose war now only out of a belief that the West actually was bent on war and that therefore there was no choice for Moscow except to precipitate war at a moment least unsuitable to Russian military interests...
...Now, what of the Russians, whose aggressive tendencies our tough-minded program of rearmament and total diplomacy is supposed to keep at peace...
...our task today is so desperately urgent that we must leave the mission of parceling out proportional shares of guilt to future historians...
...It would provide a banner of hope around which hundreds of millions of human beings could rally in their search for leadership...
...The people of Europe remain pretty well unconvinced that Russia plans aggressive warfare...
...In truth and in fact the door is not closing...
...IV Disarmament and economic reconstruction go hand in hand, for the vast savings flowing from the first would more than finance a tremendous program of social and economic rehabilitation...
...Nothing that I can see, except perhaps some of the frustration that grips us today as we pursue a negative course that holds out so little hope...
...In a moment of unparalleled peril we have chosen to dabble in fringe reforms...
...Each is experimenting with indescribably fiendish weapons of mass destruction...
...The sole beneficiary of growing financial crisis in Western Europe can only be, in the long run, a vulture-like Communism, preying as always on the sorrow and pain of a sick society...
...It represents the sober judgment of key diplomats and publicists throughout all of Western Europe...
...By self-help I mean the right of the peoples concerned to determine, subject to minimum standards, what projects they most need and want, and by self-determination I also mean their right to function under the form of government they choose for themselves...
...Actually our greatest reverses in recent years have flowed not from lack of armed might, but from our failure to provide democratic direction, moral leadership, and economic assistance to the great masses of humanity struggling up from serfdom in Asia and Africa...
...Men everywhere hunger for more than freedom from fear of war...
...His sincerity was above reproach, but not his statesmanship...
...We are for the moment the most hated people in the world...
...It would help to relieve the deepening concern of our friends around the world who fear that in the global conflict of ideas our only idea is military power...
...And perhaps the tidiest and friendliest way of presenting that suggested change would be to sketch out a rough draft of the foreign policy speech I think Mr...
...History will rightly judge us lacking in vision and courage if we dabble with deadening legalisms and consume our spirit with halfway measures when civilization itself is at stake...
...Is there any danger," Harsch wondered, "that the men in the Kremlin are beginning to feel that the door to negotiation and to ultiForeign Power Seeking to Influence U. S. Policy mate peaceful settlement of difference is closing on them and leaving them no recourse but to war...
...By self-help I mean that the nations and peoples on the receiving end will do much of the work themselves by pooling their labor and resources with the capital contributions and technical assistance of experts recruited by the UN for that purpose...
...Obviously there can be only guesses in appraising Soviet sentiment behind the Iron Curtain...
...This is a breath-taking approach, I know, but we are summoned to meet a danger without parallel in the recorded annals of humanity...
...In the long run the sword is always vanquished by the spirit...
...There is bound to be much scoffing that such a program is too idealistic, but I am deeply convinced that our troubled world is hungry for idealism...
...Ninety per cent used the word 'hysteria' most frequently to describe Washington policy...
...I think that if there is only one chance in a million, or a hundred million, we must make the supreme effort, considering the ghastly alternative of atomic war...
...It was in a belated effort to meet this deepening concern among our friends, recapture the moral ground we have lost, and calm the Soviets that the United States took the leadership this past month in proposing an international program for control of armaments...
...Many Europeans who are on our side are greatly alarmed that it is we who will pull the trigger and start the war everyone fears...
...But I don't think we can tell until we try...
...But disarmament alone is not enough...
...Western Europe is tottering on the verge of bankruptcy again because we have failed to match our demand for remilitarization with adequate economic aid...
...Total, universal disarmament is the only answer big enough to cope with the magnitude of the problems confronting mankind in this decisive moment of history...
...President Truman spoke in good faith, but with little vision...
...One of the best-informed of our educated guessers is Joseph C. Harsch, diplomatic correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor...
...This is the last call for sanity...
...That was the report of Edward R. Mur-row, chief commentator for CBS, in an on-the-spot broadcast from Europe...
...Wherever there is strife, whether actual bloodshed, as in Korea, Indo-China, and Malaya, or a grave political crisis, as in Iran, Egypt, or Indonesia, the Soviets are harnessing native discontent and nationalism for their own sinister purposes without themselves moving so much as a Russian regiment...
...Instead of a bold new program to help the under-privileged two-thirds of humanity to its feet, there was only a fumbling apology that our assistance for the present must remain "sharply limited" because our first obligation is to rearmament...
...Our task is to heal the wounds while there is still time...
...The fact that this fear is sincere, that it is deeply felt and widely shared by countless Americans whose principal purpose is peace, doesn't rescue it from the timeless truth that any policy based exclusively on fear, must be self-defeating...
...His proposals were good, but not good enough...
...Three—We accept for the theme of the conference the world's two greatest needs—universal disarmament and social and economic reconstruction...
...It was Napoleon who said: ' There are only two forces in the world—the sword and the spirit...
...On the contrary, the Western nations are beginning to acquire those 'situations of strength' from which their statesmen believe they will be able to negotiate usefully with Moscow...
...In it I emphasized that: One—We agree informally in advance to refrain as much as humanly possible from useless bickering about the past and turn our eyes to the future...
...That was the judgment of Ernie Hill, European correspondent for the Chicago Daily News and the St...
...This we must deeply believe...
...American Foreign Policy-ll A Time for Greatness By Morris H. Rubin AMERICAN foreign policy is founded on fear—the fear that the Soviet Union's aggressive designs will plunge the world into war unless held in check by the superior military power of the West...
...The results have produced something akin to catastrophe...
...Instead of eager concurrence in the plea of the British Prime Minister and the French President, there was only icy silence on the need for high-level negotiation...
...It paralyzes us, as President Truman has conceded, for the great task of providing the help and leadership which would enable the rest of the world to build a Red-resistant democratic society...
...The gains that would flow from such an approach would be immeasurable, even if the Soviet Union makes it impossible for the program to be truly universal in application...
...II These are harsh judgments of American foreign policy, and yet they come from our friends or potential friends in Europe and Asia...
...Disarmament would enable us to channel our great discoveries in the field of atomic energy, now corrupted for destructive purposes, to the rebuilding and reinvigorating of our shattered and weary world...
...Ill Of course there is room for legitimate differences of opinion on what the character and content of American foreign policy should be, but it seems to me there can be no effective challenge of the conclusion that our present policy has alarmed our friends, weakened our hold on potential friends, and brought the Soviet Union to contemplate the very course of action that policy was designed to prevent...
...But I do intend to press for the acceptance of major principles which are the irreducible requirements for any program worthy of the great challenge it is called to meet...
...If there is agreement to hold such a conference I propose to report to the leaders of the other countries that the people of the United States are prepared to disarm completely—if they and the other nations of the world will agree to do the same at the same time...
...Disarmament would release the productive genius of mankind for constructive, hope-building enterprises...
...The third essential is that the program be great enough in scope and financing to do the fundamental job that needs doing...
...They yearn for independence as a people, for freedom as individuals, and for the opportunity to build a better and richer life for themselves and their children...
...Each nation believes in its heart that its purpose is peace, and yet the world today is rushing on toward the greatest holocaust in all history...
...In this age of miraculous instruments of communication, understanding among peoples of one another's needs and problems has declined to the lowest level in our time...
...Many practical, concrete proposals for achieving our dual purpose have been proposed by distinguished Americans...
...The evidence to support these unpleasant conclusions has been piling up at an accelerating rate in recent months...
...This is the last chance for sane men to check their guns at the door and sit down to seek that general measure of tolerance and understanding and good-will, without which agree-, ment on the many specific areas of conflict and misunderstanding is impossible...
...My note was more than an invitation to a meeting...
...That is why the framers of the United Nations Charter wisely provided for just such high-level negotiation outside the more formal instruments of the United Nations...
...Each insists its purpose is defense against the other...
...it was no poet or pacifist or preacher, but one of the greatest warriors of all history who summed up the theme that must be the heart of American foreign policy...
...All that follows, then, is my own impression of what the Presir dent should say to the people of L America and the people of the world...
...But does Moscow understand that...
...If they are toying with the possibility of war now, it is mostly, as Harsch and others have reminded us, because they fear we are about to strike at them...
...The second essential is a firm foundation of self-help and self-determination running throughout the entire program...
...Each is exerting pressure-to bring the neutral or uncommitted peoples of the world on its side...
Vol. 15 • December 1951 • No. 12
