THE MAN WHO STAYED TOO LONG
The Man Who Stayed Too Long TT WAS nearly a year ago that The Progressive addressed an open letter to Dean Acheson. We urged him not to let the uproar generated by Sen. Joseph McCarthys reckless...
...Time is running out, and if we can't get an Asian policy under Acheson, we should get it under someone else...
...After pointing out that the Acheson policies are threatening to wreck the coalition of the free world, the Harvard historian said: "For the dubious advantage of fighting a futile war against Communist China, we are whipping our European allies into a state of disunity and revolt which may invite a Soviet invasion of Europe...
...Acheson is still the symbol for "softness" in popular opinion, the failures in recent months, the public feels, call for a tougher policy, when in fact we have been pursuing such a policy with disastrous effects...
...Today the foreign policy differences between Mr...
...Headlines everywhere shouted the fact that hungry India was being punished because she dared vote against the American giant...
...in fact, it grew in intensity...
...It was only when we were threatened with actual defeat in the United Nations that we reluctantly moderated our language...
...He had expected them to reject the offer...
...M.H.R...
...Acheson's surrender to the crowd which is out to destroy him has been so flagrant that those who were once his warmest defenders have now been aroused to express their alarm...
...Harsch, the Christian Science Monitor correspondent we have already quoted, reported, more in sorrow than in anger, that Acheson has broken with his past, and now "his present policy is the despair of the school of thought which argues that the first and most consistent task of American diplomacy should be to attempt to break Communist China away from Moscow...
...Acheson heard it— and heeded it...
...Three—The State Department's handling of the critical problem of relief for famine-stricken India has been a monstrous blunder...
...3. As a result, our recent and current defeats in world affairs are associated in the public mind with policies which Mr...
...It is more than a year ago that India broached the desperate need for famine relief to us...
...They said we were being hypercritical...
...Its halting recommendation to Congress, coming when it did, seemed to welcome the wrath of the Senators and Representatives...
...The question arises seriously whether Mr...
...Joseph McCarthys reckless smear of the State Depart-ment obscure the fact that many Americans who loathe McCarthyism were equally troubled by the Secretary of State's increasing emphasis on armed might as a substitute for a creative American foreign policy...
...It isn't fair to say that Mr...
...We didn't shut up, but almost everyone else in the liberal camp did...
...Reston, whose association with the State Department has been most intimate and friendly, now reports in the Times that the Secretary of State has reversed his position and favors more aid to the corrupt Chiang Kai-shek regime on Formosa, sanctions against Communist China, and total rejection of the possibility of winning the Chinese away from their partnership with Russia...
...Acheson and his critics are trifling...
...But his failure in the face of these odds is not the tragedy of Dean Acheson...
...Acheson has long since abandoned, if he ever pursued them with deep conviction...
...Right now we are wrecking the hope for peace by attributing our reverses to a policy which isn't in operation at all...
...Hubert Humphrey...
...We had our way, but at staggering cost...
...and it may as well be frankly described as madness by those who have up to now been backing Dean Acheson on the belief that he stood for something different from his Republican opposition...
...The story of Dean Acheson is one of great personal tragedy...
...We were found to be engaging in peace talks we hoped would fail...
...Here, too, the consequences have been costly...
...The logical conclusion from the facts is that Mr...
...Acheson's policies are still being attacked by his political foes as "soft toward Communism" and "appeasement-minded" —just as though he had not reversed himself...
...The Secretary of State, Harsch tells us, had permitted the U.S...
...They still denounce him for pursuing "appeasement" policies because it suits their political purposes...
...He was asked to do a super-human job, under almost impossible conditions, and against a venomous political opposition almost unparalleled in American history...
...What has happend to Mr...
...Western Germany doesn't want to rearm, at least not on our terms...
...II Three recent developments explain how we have embittered such friends as we still have in Asia and sowed great misgivings among our allies in the West...
...Acheson was meanly motivated, for we cannot believe he doesn't share Herbert Hoover's conviction that the starving must be fed without regard for political differences...
...Ache-son's turn-about is most glaring...
...His surrender is...
...Acheson, against the advice of some of our best experts and without consulting those of our friends who would be most directly involved, attempted to pressure Western Germany into immediate rearmament...
...Writing in The Nation, he said: "Because of the slanders unleashed against the Department of State last year by Sen...
...For Mr...
...Acheson read the note handed to him, he beamed with unmistakable pleasure...
...IV These are only a few of the recent judgments of trained analysts who were once admirers of Mr...
...Ache-son's program of "total diplomacy...
...Ironically, Mr...
...McCarthy, liberal critics were inclined to keep silent about their own apprehensions which had a quite different basis...
...Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., long one of the friendliest interpreters of the Truman-Acheson conduct of foreign affairs, was moved to express the darkest forebodings over the recent course of events...
...Willard Shelton, another sympathetic reporter, came to the same conclusions...
...Acheson recognized the revolutionary character of the struggle in Asia and was counselling a course designed to direct the revolution along democratic lines and harness it for peaceful purposes...
...They thought, in short, we ought to shut up and give the man a chance...
...Yet, consider what happened...
...One senses Mr...
...The hypocrisy of our position was graphically exposed by Joseph C. Harsch, chief Washington correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, who has been a sympathetic interpreter of the Acheson position...
...Vastly more important, however, than the high tragedy in this man's career is the disastrous impact of his surrender on the course of American foreign policy...
...The costly confusion that arises from the fact that the Secretary of State symbolizes one policy and urges the opposite policy will continue until he resigns...
...They thought we were exaggerating the negative aspects of Mr...
...One—Our Government was cool toward proposals for negotiation with Communist China over Korea and other Far Eastern issues...
...It waited until the week the great majority of Congressmen were furious with India for that country's refusal to go along with our UN action against China...
...Now the fact must be faced that Secretary Acheson, preoccupied with his defensive battle against McCarthy, is failing to develop the affirmative policy for Asia which events in the UN have shown to be desperately needed...
...Acheson was conducting a press conference...
...They said we were rocking the boat at a time McCarthy was trying to capsize it...
...This policy is madness...
...Acheson has become the prisoner of his critics...
...The news that Red China had rejected the UN's cease-fire proposal reached the State Department as Mr...
...Ache-son's policies annoyed some of our friends...
...Our critical analysis of Mr...
...The State Department chose the worst possible time to submit the proposal to Congress...
...The harsh fact is that Mr...
...Acheson's surrender to his political opponents hasn't greatly softened their attack on him...
...His successor may be just as unwilling to fight for a creative American foreign policy, but at the very least the country may know what his policy is and be better equipped to sit in intelligent judgment of its success or failure...
...Acheson's recent operations have brought us perilously close to the most abject failure of diplomacy that one can conceive—the strengthening of our potential enemies and the division of our allies...
...As a consequence we have this hopeless situation: 1. The State Department is pursuing a tough, military-minded policy in Asia and against the Soviet Union generally...
...2. Yet Mr...
...We insisted on bulling through, over the objection of all our friends, the resolution condemning China as an aggressor...
...The news raced around the world...
...Acheson's positive relish for his China policy...
...There was universal agreement that the United States could and must help substantially...
...Acheson and his policies...
...Two—Mr...
...And the Soviet Union has made it clear that the Acheson scheme would be regarded as a direct incitement to war...
...Harsch wrote: "When Mr...
...France and Britain are fearful of the provocative character of such a headlong step without at least making one more great effort to reach agreement with the Soviet Union on a German settlement...
...III It is in Asia, where many of the great issues of our time are being hammered out, that we have lost the greatest ground during the past year, and it is here that Mr...
...Acheson has stayed too long...
...It would be impossible to conceive of handing the Kremlin a better rallying-call for the people of Russia to fight than to revive the dread fear of a rearmed Germany...
...Countless conferences have been held, sparked by Minnesota's Sen...
...Acheson has surrendered...
...We were caught bargaining in bad faith...
...Their motives were decent: Acheson needed all the support he could get in his battle with McCarthy, and when the conflict in Korea came along, national unity seemed to them more desirable than criticism...
...Certainly his present policies are almost identical with those of his most persistent critics of the past...
...The thunder on the right continued unabated...
...delegation to go along with the cease-fire proposals "not because he believed anything could come of it, or because he wanted anything to come of it, but because he considered it a necessary preliminary to getting on with the task of putting the aggressor brand on China and then sanctions...
...The famine-relief program was sent to cold-storage by the Senate...
...4. Since Mr...
...We are indebted to James Reston, diplomatic corespondent for the New York Times, for reminding us that in January, 1950, Mr...
...It is only part of the story, I think, to say that he is the prisoner of the opposition...
Vol. 15 • March 1951 • No. 3
