America and the Peace Offensive
The Progressive Te Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free' Volume 17 __ May, 1953 Number 5 America and the Peace Offensive EVEN the sourest cynic must have felt a flutter of hope...
...What does all this add up to...
...Free elections in a unified Germany...
...Malenkov's reversal of the Stalinist judgment was harshly unequivocal...
...Certainly Mr...
...Would we consider scrapping the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as a condition of unifying a free Germany...
...Eisenhower must expect to negotiate these issues and not to require Soviet capitulation on all or any of them as a condition of negotiation...
...The Western nations would then feel free to relax their safeguards against Communism and resume the historic rivalries that would in the end lead them to destroy one another...
...McCarthy, Bridges, and Knowland are ready to toss his way...
...There is nothing especially new in words like these...
...No, it wasn't the words so much, good as they were...
...But a few educated guesses have stood out above the torrent of master-minding hokum that has cluttered up press and radio since Stalin's death...
...his realization that formulas matter "less than the faith—the good faith without which no formula can work justly and effectively...
...turned to cautious optimism and then to firmer hope as the Kremlin's approach ranged from the general to the specific, from Malenkov's broad observation that there were no irreconcilable issues dividing East and West to concrete acts aimed at resolving the conflict in Korea and preventing border disputes in Europe...
...Time means the relaxation, for the present anyway, of the tensions and pressures that the old regime lived by and the new regime could die by...
...In calling on the Soviet Union to prove its peaceful purpose with deeds, Mr...
...Are we prepared to use our influence to urge France to withdraw her colonial domination of IndoChina as part of the settlement there, and to begin a gradual ending of her overlordship in the tension areas of North Africa...
...Affirmative answer to every one would require a complete reversal of our present policies, just as our demands on the Soviets call for a total break with their current course...
...The Eisenhower Administration seemed a house divided against itself...
...Is Mr...
...Eisenhower prepared to answer as affirmatively as he wants the Soviets to respond, to questions like these: • Is the United States ready to recognize -Communist China as part of an overall Asian settlement...
...Hence, the peace offensive...
...Ill Having said all this we would be less than candid if we did not go on to point to a serious flaw in Mr...
...Dulles himself picked this delicate moment to announce that the Point Four program should be gradually abandoned and the task of aiding the underdeveloped areas of the world be assigned to private philanthropy—hardly a concept to win cheers among the proud and sensitive peoples of Asia for whose loyalty we are competing...
...Malenkov's repudiation of the bizarre plot fabricated in Stalin's regime came as an unprecedented break with the past which has been widely interpreted as an indictment of Stalinist techniques and policies...
...And some of Dulles' aides in the State Department were so jittery over the prospect of peace, which might mean the abandonment of some of the comforting paraphernalia of the Cold War, that "something very like panic" overtook them, the Al-sops reported, when the subject of negotiating for a unified Germany came up...
...This approach wasn't new, either...
...Brien McMahon in 1949 and 1950...
...Prices on consumer goods were slashed up to 15 per cent...
...The considerations of longer-range Soviet strategy, as laid down by Stalin last October, happen to mesh perfectly with the shorter-run needs of Stalin's successor...
...But this isn't all...
...I know of only one question on which progress waits," the President said...
...The power of the address was to be found in its affirmative dedication to the moral and social equivalents of war—hot or cold...
...Therefore, the theory goes, Soviet interest lies in lessening tensions between the Kremlin and the West so that the bond which holds capitalist countries together—fear of Russia— will be loosened if not severed...
...Free elections in the satellite nations of Europe...
...Eisenhower came close to doing this by presenting what are clearly maximum, long-run goals as if they were minimum, short-run conditions to the opening of general peace negotiations...
...It isn't sound statesmanship to seal off escape corridors which could lead to honorable compromise...
...He will have to break free from advisers who are terrified by the risks they see everywhere, except perhaps the greatest risk of all—to be cowed by fear into standing pat on the past...
...II But this aimless drifting came to a dramatic end April 16 when President Eisenhower spoke to the world in accents of hope and tones of peace...
...The Progressive Te Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free' Volume 17 __ May, 1953 Number 5 America and the Peace Offensive EVEN the sourest cynic must have felt a flutter of hope as Stalin's successors smothered their fellow men with conciliatory embraces throughout much of March and April...
...The original suspicion that the Soviets might again be crying "Sheep...
...imaginations "to a new kind of war—a declared, total war, not upon any human enemy, but upon the brute force of poverty and need...
...In fact, they were little more than a paraphrase of President Truman's words May 24, 1951: "The only kind of war we seek is the good old fight against man's ancient enemies . . . poverty, disease, hunger, and illiteracy...
...Much that President Eisenhower said makes for a magnificent start, but we hope he will not be sandbagged by the Know-Nothing gang in his own party into making demands that could destroy the effectiveness of negotiation and the hope of peace...
...For six weeks President Eisenhower was coolly correct but far from creative...
...Is the U. S. prepared to permit Red China's entry into the United Nations...
...But what was dramatically new was to have a President of the United States, and a Republican President, and a President who has been a five-star general embrace such a progressive program at just the moment in history when at the most it could be decisive in promoting peace and reconstruction and at the least provide affirmative direction to American foreign policy...
...The common denominator in all these needs is—time...
...Nobody knows, except a few men in the Kremlin, and they are not given to swapping garrulous confidences with the West...
...This long-haul Soviet view (analyzed in the March Progressive by Otto Leichter in "The New Stalinism") rejects the concept of the inevitability of war between capitalism and communism, proclaims anew the feasibility of co-existence for the two systems, but emphasizes for the comrades the theory that capitalist countries cannot long coexist because, if left to their own devices, they will be driven to conflict by fierce competition for markets and colonies...
...Accept the doctrine of UN inspection of any plan for disarmament...
...The guess that makes the most sense to us goes like this: In this first significant change in Soviet leadership, Malenkov & Company feel profoundly unsure and insecure...
...The fact that it falls short of the more romantic notion that the men in the Kremlin have become possessed with a passion for peace for its own sake doesn't for a moment lessen the dramatic possibilities for harnessing the current Kremlin peace offensive for hopeful, constructive purposes...
...the most sweeping amnesty in Soviet history brought freedom for some 2,000,000 prisoners, and the Soviet press softened its shrill attacks on everything American...
...Time, in this context, is another word for peace...
...its eloquent summons to mankind to harness its energies, resources, and...
...It was a memorable address —one of the ablest and most creative statements on American foreign policy uttered in recent years...
...Eisenhower will have to tread warily among the booby-traps that characters like Sens...
...But the most extraordinary development of all was the exoneration of the 15 Russian doctors, many of them Jewish, who had been condemned as a "murdering clique" of traitors in the last weeks before Stalin's fatal illness...
...The Progressive has been pleading for just such an approach to American foreign policy for four years, and we were proud to carry articles developing this basic theme by Walter Reuther and the late Sen...
...Pravda was ordered to report that the "accusations were false, the documentary source material without foundation, and the case manufactured by impermissible means of investigation...
...And most of all he will have to remember that negotiation does not mean total surrender by one side, but rather the give-and-take of both sides genuinely bent on agreement...
...Eisenhower's declaration of policy: his recurring tendency to require of the Soviets, as conditions for negotiation and evidence of sincerity, prior acceptance of our position on issues that must become the very subject of negotiation...
...There is much more in President Eisenhower's address we liked—his happy concession that "neither the United States nor any other nation can properly claim to possess a perfect, immutable formula" for disarmament...
...Now every one of these demands represents a sound step forward toward resolving world conflicts and easing world tensions, but every one happens to require a complete reversal of present Soviet policy...
...These are painfully tough questions—for which there are no quick, easy answers, or anything approximating unanimity of opinion...
...Return World War II prisoners of war...
...it was partly the occasion—America's response to the most hopeful drive for peace since the end of World War II— and, more important, the proposal that came as a breathtaking climax...
...They recognize the need to build popular support inside Russia, allay the fears and relieve the back-breaking economic pressures on the satellites, and bolster their role as senior partner with the only major ally they have, Red China...
...They must move warily to consolidate their power against the potential challenge of hostile forces at home...
...Halt Communist fighting in Indo-China and Malaya...
...Said the President: "This government is ready to ask its people to join with all nations in devoting a substantial percentage of the savings achieved by disarmament to a fund for world aid and reconstruction . . . to help other peoples to develop the underdeveloped areas of the world...
...Are we in a mood to end our military support of Chiang Kai-shek whose avowed purpose is to destroy the Communist government of China...
...Sign an Austrian peace treaty...
...It is this: What is the Soviet Union ready to dol" But what if Malenkov now asks us to go and do likewise...
...Eisenhower said the.Russians must agree to: • Free elections in a united Korea...
...Official American response to the first Soviet overtures was painfully slow in forming...
...This assessment of Soviet strategy strikes us as the one that squares best with such evidence as we have...
...Perhaps more revealing as a clue to the mood of the new rulers of Russia were their acts inside the Soviet Union...
...He answered questions put to him at press conferences, but he held back, week after week, from going to the country and the world with a ringing declaration of America's program for peace...
...Secretary of State Dulles floated trial balloon proposals for the settlement of the problems of Korea and Formosa, but the White House quickly punctured them with a statement that Dulles' views were not even "under consideration" by the White House...
...his agreement with Malenkov that there are no issues, great or small, that are insoluble, and his repeated affirmation that the United States is willing to do its just part in the pursuit of peace...
Vol. 17 • May 1953 • No. 5
