COLD WAR OR HOT COMPETITION
Cold War or Hot Competition THE SOVIET UNION needs—and wants—peace. Its people insist on it; its government is committed to it, and its world strategy and domestic planning are rooted in the...
...We go on building our network of regional alliances, but the Soviets deftly vault over them by wooing the nations in those areas which have refused to become part of our structure of containment...
...this, as the Kremlin sees it, would constitute an act of national suicide...
...The new goals call for the publication of 100,000,000 copies of 440 books in 122 languages...
...This does not mean that Soviet military might is not growing...
...It is impossible to predict the outcome now...
...They reported they were enormously impressed by the extent to which Soviet science is catching up with parallel American developments...
...This state of affairs would enable the Kremlin, for instance, to make the first fruits of peaceful atomic power available to India, or Burma, or Indonesia, or all three—however much the power may be needed at home...
...In fact you reject it...
...In fact» several Kremlin experts on foreign affairs cheerfully agreed that President Eisenhower is genuinely dedicated to peace and to a more tolerable relationship with the Soviet bloc, but they felt, too, that his Secretary of State is wedded to a continuation of the cold war, and that the President is surrounded by a crowd of trigger-happy characters in his own Party...
...The reverse is true in the United States...
...Communists in the United States, who are maneuvering on many fronts for collaboration with liberals and democratic socialists, will doubtless reject this position as "Wall Street reaction," but their comrades in the U.S.S.R...
...We are calm and secure...
...the official releases stacked high on the table tell a fetching enough story, as do some of the carefully prepared comments of official Kremlin spokesmen...
...3. The "collective leadership" is convinced that its power to rule the Soviet Union is soundly and securely based...
...Now that we feel secure, the time has come to raise the living standards of the people...
...They have an enormous stake in the preservation of things as they are...
...For example: • Last year and the year before, the Western Powers proposed to start with a reduction of conventional forces and achieve nuclear disarmament later on...
...Like People Everywhere Almost everything I saw and heard in my stay in the Soviet Union convinced me that all planning is based on the conviction that world war has become not only unthinkable but impossible...
...They were attending a Soviet conference on nuclear physics...
...But few Americans are aware of the fact that the Czechs have also offered to build a rubber-processing plant and shoe factory in Egypt, and that other Soviet-bloc nations, including Hungary, Poland, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Communist China have made, or are now making, agreements with Egypt to provide equipment and technical aid in building electric power facilities, an enamel-ware factory, a motor vehicle factory, oil processing plants, preserved food plants, and factories to produce rolled steel and machinery...
...The most powerful American atom-smasher, at Berkeley, Calif., is a six-billion volt installation...
...Bulganin, Khrushchev, and Shepilov—the last then editor of Pravda and now foreign minister— that they were greatly angered over the Dulles pronouncement pooh-poohing the recent Soviet decision to cut its armed forces unilaterally by another 1,200,000 men...
...what we do and fail to do in such critical areas as race relations and civil liberties exert a significant influence on the effectiveness with which we compete with the Soviets for the loyalties of the uncommitted millions of humanity still undecided which form of society offers them their greatest hope...
...certainly no short-cuts that I know about...
...The Kremlin's Grand Strategy This is one of the hard facts of life that shakes the complacency of an American traveling in the Soviet Union—this slowly dawning realization that the Indonesian sitting next to you in the plane to Kiev, or the Burmese who shares your table in the dining room of Moscow's Metropole Hotel, regards many of the conditions you find backward a breathtaking advance over anything he has known before...
...A group of 14 American physicists was in Moscow while I was in the capital...
...The best information available indicates that the U.S.S.R...
...I believe we are acting more intelligently right now than you are...
...The Soviets are not stopping short of our own back-yard—the Latin American nations...
...There is a great deal we can learn from the Russians, perhaps more than we can from you of America...
...In addition, the Soviet Union is launching a book exchange program with more than 900 foreign organizations and libraries...
...I am afraid, though, that for all my respect for Mr...
...When interviews on foreign policy move from the general to the specific, the inquiring foreigner often finds himself enmeshed in such a tangle of doubletalk and common sense that his pursuit of specific answers ends in total frustration...
...This, necessarily, is only the most fragmentary report of the gigantic Soviet drive to expand the frontiers of Soviet influence, trade, and friendship...
...I tried to argue that the Russian people had paid a fearful price, in spiritual and intellectual values, for their material achievements...
...Foreign experts in Moscow are by no means agreed on Soviet goals in the Middle East...
...There are no easy answers...
...They were given access to Soviet laboratories and they interviewed leading Soviet specialists...
...The American physicists, incidentally, provided another clue to an assessment of the extent of Soviet determination to wage a militant— but peaceful—struggle in the area of competitive co-existence...
...the Kremlin insists on being cut in and having its voice heard, in areas historically closed to Soviet ambitions in the past...
...While there was certainly nothing altruistic about the decision," said one foreign expert, "there was also no urgent pressure to make munitions workers out of soldiers...
...We are convinced our way of life—socialism—offers the greatest long-run hope to the greatest number of people in the underdeveloped areas of the world...
...They concluded that some of the best Russian brains in the field are now concentrating on forms of nuclear research which have no known military application...
...its government is committed to it, and its world strategy and domestic planning are rooted in the continuing relaxation of world tensions...
...But motivations and ambitions under the table are hard to see and harder to assess...
...When Zhukov insisted the United States must stop being frightened by the U.S.S.R., I said I thought it was the other way around, that the Soviet Union had often acted as though it were ridden by an insecurity and inferiority complex...
...The calm, almost cocky attitude of Zhukov, which reflects the public manner of his superiors in the Soviet hierarchy, grows out of "the central fact," as he explained, "that we are now part of a great socialist camp of 13 nations and 900 million people, with tremendous development in industry, science, engineering, and education...
...Not only are their trained representatives roaming the underdeveloped areas of the world, offering aid, trade, and a subtle brand of the party line...
...But the Middle East was and is heavily armed...
...The Soviets have now accepted this scheme but the West has disowned its own child...
...But you went ahead...
...Zhukov laughed...
...These delegations are met at airports and railroad stations by Kremlin smoothies bearing handsome garlands of flowers...
...But this short-run advantage need not be decisive, and certainly not fatal, if the West, and this means particularly the United States, understands the nature of the struggle and responds creatively...
...For this the Communist leaders blame our State Department and the Pentagon—not President Eisenhower or his envoy on disarmament, Harold Stassen...
...I was to find among many another foreign observer a grave concern over what is widely regarded as a critical miscalculation in Dulles' estimate of Soviet motivation...
...However, we are against peaceful co-existence of ideologies because it would mean ideological disarmament...
...The crowning irony, it seemed to me as I soaked up the details of Soviet strategy and progress in this all-important area, is the uncontested fact that the United States possesses almost everything it would take to beat the Soviets at their own game-superior development of resources, greater wealth, unmatched productive genius, a fabulous capacity for organization, a tradition of anti-colonialism, however dormant in recent years, and the long-run strength of a free society and free institutions...
...The only way out of the present problem is for all sides to agree to send no arms to this area of such great tension and conflict...
...But as we compared notes and swapped impressions of identical experiences, it became increasingly clear that never the twain would meet...
...They felt that Dulles was shooting from the hip again, that his derisive statement was needlessly irritating and far from the mark...
...If that were true once, it is certainly not true now...
...The Soviets are playing hard at competitive co-existence...
...A graphic example of stepped-up development in Latin America can be seen in Brazil...
...But all this has a natural and historical background...
...We have achieved in 30 years what might have been expected to take 200 years...
...This was intelligent and timely...
...It is only possible to say that this kind of race will go to the more intelligent...
...The two are completely separate...
...For the most part, foreign observers there say it is too early to tell, in the current process of change and development, what the official position will shake down to...
...is not interested in a unified Germany, except perhaps on the impossible basis of a Germany that would be her satellite or ally...
...We had both been to Russian farms and factories, schools, and hospitals, government ministries and private homes, state stores and the free market...
...Still others, whose anti-Communist credentials seemed to me to be as unassailable, argued that Soviet behavior in the Middle East had no specific objective, that it was part of the twofold overall Soviet pattern of 1) reacting to Western military alliances, like the Bagdad Pact, by setting up counter-alliances, and 2) harnessing militant nationalism and popular discontent to Soviet purposes in the continuing struggle of competitive coexistence in the underdeveloped areas of the world...
...Nor are only delegations from the underdeveloped areas impressed by what they see and hear...
...Thus, when I asked Zhukov how he could possibly justify the arming of Egypt by the Kremlin's satellite, Czechoslovakia, he replied: "The struggle between Israel and the Arabs began long before the Czech armament arrangement with Egypt...
...For all their revolutionary heritage and surface militancy, the present rulers of Russia struck me as a relatively conservative group—conservative in the sense that they are so wedded to preserving and consolidating their gains at home that they will not risk a major adventure abroad...
...Of course they can use the men in factory production, but there is no great pinch, especially in heavy industry...
...Kommunist, official organ of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, recently emphasized this significant distinction in a lead editorial: "It is necessary to remember firmly that we are for peaceful co-existence of states with different social systems...
...Kremlin maneuvers in world politics are not inspired, as the Secretary of State has suggested, by internal tensions, or economic weakness, or the need to retreat in the face of Western power...
...Soviet atomic production does not lack for adequate manpower...
...Zhukov argued that the new Soviet security and the accompanying relaxation make it possible now for the Kremlin to give greater consideration to consumer needs...
...this for them is a closed book...
...This is not the place for a full-scale discussion of what our foreign policy is and ought to be, but I do want to conclude this report with several summary reflections based on my journey to Russia, two of her satellites, and seven Western nations...
...Days afterward, I came upon an American newspaper and read what a shambles the House of Representatives had made of President Eisenhower's modest foreign aid bill...
...Certainly Hitler would have destroyed us were it not for the back-breaking sacrifices we made to achieve industrialization...
...The Russians prefer to finance projects that involve major capital developments...
...they have also made a mecca of Moscow for foreign delegations that come as "guests of the state" to see and marvel at the miracles of Soviet achievement...
...Much of this equipment is in short supply in the Soviet Union, but here again the rulers of Russia reveal their dedicated resolve to win political friends and sign up economic partners in every area on earth— even if it means still more delays for the goods-hungry people of the Soviet Union...
...During my limited travels in European Russia, for example, my amateur eyes saw no indication of any considerable dispersion of industry and housing as a precaution against saturation bombing...
...The pursuit of peace will become a more hopeful process, in my judgment, if we abandon inflexible hostility toward everything the Soviets say and do, and adopt the more creative and discriminating policy of welcoming and encouraging reforms within the Soviet orbit...
...It does mean that the men in the Kremlin are convinced that the balance of terror has been reached, making thermonuclear warfare unthinkable, and that the old goal of seeking the worldwide supremacy of Communism must be sought by other means—political, economic, and ideological...
...Soviet spokesmen pointed out to me—with considerable correctness— that they have several times accepted Western proposals, only to have them repudiated by the West...
...It ships abroad food, building materials, machinery, medicines, and power installations urgently needed at home—simply because such shipments advance the Kremlin's determination to win out in the struggle for competitive co-existencc...
...from neutralist nations like India, Burma, and Indonesia...
...When informed that the United States is building a 30-billion volt machine at Brookhaven, Long Island, N.Y., the Soviet scientists proudly announced that they are planning one of 50-billion volts...
...Americans observe that Soviet housing is vastly inferior to their own, that consumer goods are less varied and in far shorter supply than at home, that Soviet agriculture still lags about a quarter of a century behind American farming, and that industry, for all its spectacular gains, is still, in many fields, far behind American productive enterprise...
...PART III • It will not consent to a unified Germany that would become a partner of the NATO military alliance of the West...
...The confidence is real, as opposed to the bogus self-confidence of the past, one of the most astute of foreign observers told me...
...Similar offers of aid—and many offers of mutually beneficial trade—• are being made to most of the underdeveloped and some of the semi-developed nations of the world...
...Nobody is asked...
...But within definite limits: • It will not abandon the type of adventure on which it is embarked in the Middle East...
...The Crowning Irony Zhukov, foreign editor of Pravda, was somewhat less cocky on this score, but equally disturbing...
...When I pressed Zhukov on whether the Soviet Union would concur in a Great Power decision to end all arms shipments to the Middle East in the interest of reaching a negotiated settlement in that tension-charged area, he tossed back a quick "of course...
...Earlier this year Premier Bulganin assured Latin America that "the U.S.S.R...
...These are the dominant conclusions I formed in the field of foreign policy during my month in the Soviet Union...
...Why, indeed, I was asked again and again, should any sane man in the Kremlin cut his country's throat by agreeing to a unified Germany that would become a NATO military partner of the West...
...We can wait...
...Most of the foreign diplomats with whom I discussed this problem felt that the Kremlin position on Germany made sense, notwithstanding the patent hypocrisy involved in its insistence that its influence over East Germany is not decisive...
...The conflict in our time will be resolved in the areas of social, economic, political, and ideological appeals...
...This has been a tremendous process of converting a backward country into a great industrial power...
...And almost every hotel in every city I visited had its contingent of Chinese, from about age 17 to 70...
...I returned with the reinforced conviction that the most serious damage to the American cause abroad continues to be inflicted, however unwittingly, by those who are shrillest in their denunciation of Communism, by those who have allowed their understandable rejection of Communism to become an obsessive, corrosive, runaway force that plays squarely into the hands of the Soviets...
...Thus, a great Russian army is on the march executing the current grand strategy of the Kremlin...
...The Soviet Union's influential new elite—the leading scientists, artists, writers, and managerial class—contribute greatly to the new moderation...
...everyone is told...
...It will not accept NATO as a permanent fact of life, for it seems genuinely to believe that NATO represents a threat to the peace of Europe and the security of the Soviet Union...
...They are put up in comfortable hotels and then whisked off to see the new apartments, the new factories, the new schools, the new parks, and the best of the farms...
...from countries oriented toward the West, like Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Japan, and South Africa...
...We were alone in the world, surrounded by hostile nations bent on uprooting and destroying the way of life we had chosen for ourselves...
...Secretary of State Dulles continues to sneer at the scope and character of the Soviet program of foreign economic aid, but such figures as we have do not justify his complacency...
...A Senate Foreign Relations Committee subcommittee, headed by Montana's Senator Mike Mansfield, for example, estimated that the Soviet Union has made available about $1 billion worth of credits during the past year...
...But one thing seemed certain to me—that this new Soviet warfare, whose weapons are dams, factories, power plants, credits, and books, poses a challenge to the West, and most signally the United States, that dwarfs the prospect of Soviet conquest by force of arms...
...There is much we can agree on—if agreement is truly your objective...
...And the third step calls for an imaginative implementation of this broad concept with a program that emphasizes economic aid and technical assistance, liberalization of foreign trade, and recognition of the political and cultural aspirations of peoples struggling up to independence after centuries of serfdom...
...Soviet aid is mostly economic—not military...
...For example, the editors of New Times, the official organ of the trade unions that specializes in foreign affairs—it is published in 10 languages—told me they were convinced that "socialism" has tremendous appeal to the peoples of the world struggling up to a better way of life...
...The Kremlin is also embarked on a shrewd campaign to get the peoples of the world reading Soviet books and other publications...
...War has become impossible," they said...
...nor does it mean that the Soviets have acquired a humanitarian philosophy toward war...
...This nation has increased its first-quarter trade with the U.S.S.R...
...Among the latter, however, there is often wide disagreement, as in the case of Soviet ambitions in the Middle East...
...They were shown, for example, the new Soviet 10-billion electron-volt atom-smasher, biggest in the world...
...My luncheon companion replied: "Perhaps they have, but not nearly so much as you of the West sometimes think...
...After many hours of discussion of foreign affairs with Russians and foreigners I came away with the dominant conviction that the Soviets are placing a great many of their blue-chips in the struggle of competitive co-existence...
...The means and ends of Communism are in such sharp contradiction to the methods and values of democracy that domestic cooperation between Communists and liberals seems to me an untenable proposition at this stage of history...
...As for the ordinary Russian people, they are like ordinary people everywhere, only more so on the subject of war...
...During my brief stay in Russia I saw scores of such delegations in the principal cities—delegations from the Soviet satellites, like Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Viet Minh...
...This was the one point in our long conversation on which I found myself agreeing whole-heartedly with Zhukov...
...Often they get to meet someone fairly high up in one of the ministries...
...by nearly 65 per cent over the same period a year ago...
...Some of the resident foreign political experts with whom I talked interpreted this report, and others like it, as indicating that the Kremlin is determined to win the race for the development of the peacetime uses of atomic energy not only because it could greatly strengthen its own economy but, more significantly, because by making the techniques and materials available to the underdeveloped nations of the world, the Soviet Union would be in a better position to win their friendship and loyalty...
...Both in 1954 and 1955 the French and British submitted ceilings on the armed forces of all the major powers...
...Listening in on the Party Line One of the ablest, and certainly one of the most articulate of Soviet spokesmen on foreign affairs, Yuri Zhukov, foreign editor of Pravda, put it to me this way: "There was a time when we behaved as a people in a besieged fortress...
...It will not measurably relax its iron grip on the Eastern European satellites...
...Such a course, it seems to me, holds out the greatest measure of hope to meet and defeat the new Soviet challenge...
...And what's more, he added with vibrant enthusiasm, Russia had been a backward, underdeveloped country, like his, hardly more than a generation ago...
...This complete freedom of maneuver—a freedom based on the squashing of everyone else's freedom—gives the Kremlin a powerful short-run advantage in the all-important competition for the friendship of the uncommitted one-third of humanity...
...We must make it up in ten to twenty years or be crushed...
...In a totalitarian society like the Soviet Union's, the ruling clique can, and does, exact tremendous sacrifices from the people at home in order to press an advantage abroad...
...In fact, I saw the reverse—the continuing concentration of skyscraper apartment buildings in the heart of major cities...
...Peasants have become industrial workers...
...Two—Patient cooperation with the Soviet Union in relaxing world tensions must not include a revival of popular-frontism...
...In fact, there has been a hardening of the Kremlin's attitude toward the United States because of the failure of recent disarmament negotiations...
...They know only one thing—that war is unthinkable—-and they will tell you this with obvious sincerity...
...We are confident...
...One day in mid-May I ate with a bright young labor leader from Indonesia—a Communist, I thought, but he didn't say...
...This experience, and others like it, underscored one of the profound concerns I took away from my journey among the Soviets—the realization that at least some segments of the uncommitted one-half of humanity struggling up from the' dark ages of colonialism find much that is hopeful and exemplary in Soviet society...
...When I asked if the Kremlin had so completely lost influence in East Germany that it could no longer counsel a course of neutralizing a unified Germany, the answer invariably came back: "In the first place, there is no evidence that your country would consent to such a course...
...The use of atomic power in these backward areas, I was told, could revolutionize their economies and enable them to vault over decades of painfully slow development...
...This we can achieve," he said, "if we can banish the last remnants of the cold war...
...I had found Soviet society trailing far behind American standards...
...Sometimes, too, we have shortages of foodstuffs...
...They are not especially interested in the maneuvers and machinations of world politics...
...they know that war would destroy the society which has given them extraordinary perquisites and influence...
...I was not able, for example, to dredge out anything accurate or meaningful on the Kremlin's actual attitude toward Communist Parties abroad...
...Their basis of comparison is the desperate poverty at home, incomparably poorer housing, faltering infant industry, and a Nineteenth Century system of farming...
...We go on emphasizing military aid to the underdeveloped areas of the world—80 per cent of the last foreign aid measure was earmarked for military purposes—while the Soviets place their greatest reliance on what these nations need most—liberalized trade, loans on easy terms for capital development, and an increasing volume of technical assistance...
...They do concur on one phase of their diagnosis: the Kremlin will move as far and as fast as it can to extend its influence in that crossroads region of the world, but it is determined to stop short of any action that might explode in world war...
...Perhaps the nearest thing to the truth would be to say that this reduction in armed forces was more an economic advantage than an economic necessity...
...Of course we had to make sacrifices...
...As one Westerner put it: "The wooing of socialists as part of the revival of popular-frontism involves an element of disengagement with Communists abroad...
...One—We can have a tolerable peace for a long time—if we are prepared for honorable negotiation of our differences with the Kremlin on a give-and-take, live-and-let-live basis...
...You thought we were bluffing...
...Now it is too late...
...In the field of disarmament the Russians seem to mean business...
...To achieve this goal we need to shed some of our fears and suspicions, and we need an administration in Washington that resolutely refuses to be stampeded from its pursuit of peace by the destructive jingoism of the McCarthy-Knowland-Jen-ner-Bridges crowd in Congress that regards negotiation as appeasement, agreement as surrender, and cultural exchange as a crime...
...And I believe they are...
...The example of Soviet behavior toward one troublesome nation— Egypt—is significant...
...Since reading all this, and more along parallel lines, I have not been able to shake the bitter reflection that Zhukov was more right than he realized...
...are far more realistic...
...Suspicion of American motives is still a considerable factor in Soviet foreign policy planning...
...A year ago Sir Anthony Eden proposed a demilitarized zone between Eastern and Western Europe, with joint inspection of the zone...
...foreign aid has run five times that amount, but some 80 per cent of our assistance is earmarked for military expenditures in such areas as South Korea, Formosa, Thailand, and Pakistan...
...He had come as a "guest of the state" to witness the May Day doings and had stayed on to see the sights and observe the workings of Soviet society...
...Stalin said in 1932 that we were behind the West by 50 to 100 years...
...Our second step must be to respond to its challenge by moving away from the sterile, negative concept of anti-Communism toward an affirmative approach that underscores the goals of freedom and abundance...
...Most of us know of the Kremlin-inspired sale of Czech arms to the Nasser regime last year...
...The Soviets have twice announced unilateral reduction in their armed forces—to a total of 1,800,000 men...
...Some of those with whom I talked in Moscow were convinced that the Soviets are determined to drive the Western powers out of that region, even if the price includes localized hostilities...
...This, I was told again and again, is precisely the course the Soviet Union's "collective leadership" is pursuing in its broad approach to world politics...
...It is much too early to tell how well it is working or to estimate its ultimate impact on the course of world politics...
...The New Soviet Challenge It is later than we think, but not too late for a fresh start along a more hopeful road than we are presently traveling...
...is currently publishing 28,-000,000 books a year in the languages of the free world—English, German, French, Swedish, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Afghan, Japanese, Hindi, and others...
...My Indonesian companion had found Soviet society surging generations ahead of life in Southeast Asia...
...We warned you that arming West Germany and taking her into NATO would be dangerous and prevent unification...
...We are well aware of the fact that our housing is inadequate, that we do not have so wide a choice of woolens as you have on Fifth Avenue...
...It will not relax, but in fact will redouble, its efforts to neutralize and, wherever possible, to attract to its orbit the uncommitted peoples of Asia and Africa—by peaceful means...
...But it is an army of technicians, traders, scientists, engineers, teachers, and propagandists...
...I would not be telling you the truth if I said we trusted foreigners, for we didn't...
...The spectacular offensive mounted by the Soviets in the struggle of competitive co-existence is by no means confined to the economic field...
...Having decided on the rather substantial reduction, they moved, naturally enough, to squeeze the most propaganda value out of their decision...
...On the contrary, the "collective leadership" is leading from strength and confidence, and not weakness and apprehension...
...2. The "collective leadership" believes that it has caught up with and, in some fields, passed the United States in the development of the most modern weapons of war...
...It was clear when I was in the same room one evening with the Messrs...
...They are based on many talks with Soviet officials and with the shrewdest, best informed foreign diplomats I could find...
...But one of the built-in contradictions of Soviet foreign policy is the Kremlin's seeming determination to ignite new, and fan old fires of conflict in local but strategic areas— even as it pursues its vastly more publicized goal of seeking freedom from fear of nuclear warfare...
...The reporter can only guess on the basis of known facts and acts, and consult the best foreign experts...
...This new army may exercise a greater influence on the course of world politics in our lifetime and pose a greater challenge to Western society and values than the combined strength of nuclear and conventional fire-power of the Red Army, Air-force, and Navy, in the judgment of many of the most thoughtful foreign observers I encountered during my month in the Soviet Union...
...Five—I came home more firmly convinced than ever that American foreign policy is still too inflexibly committed to military containment of the Soviet bloc at a time in history when the economic, political, and ideological factors of competitive coexistence are playing a far more decisive role in world affairs...
...The problem that Russia faced about a generation ago is much like our own today...
...I talked to at least half-a-dozen Soviet spokesmen on the subject and came away with this composite party-line position: "We wanted a unified, neutralized Germany...
...This, together with enormous progress in industrialization, they believe, has placed the Soviet Union in a powerful position to bargain for concessions and to compete successfully in the struggle of competitive co-existence...
...The few who ventured a guess thought the Kremlin would downgrade the importance of Communist parties in foreign countries...
...Weeks later I read of how our Congress had loaded the final version of the bill with a disproportionate amount of military aid, how it had slashed by more than a third the President's recommendation for funds to the United Nations technical assistance program, how it had reacted hostilely to a more liberal foreign trade program, and how it had "punished" Tito for his association with the Kremlin...
...Firm and Facile on Germany Soviet spokesmen are firm and facile on the subject of Germany...
...The new "collective leadership" of the U.S.S.R.—calm, confident, and poised—is in a mood to bargain and negotiate in the pursuit of a more durable world peace...
...Politically, it was a shrewd stroke, and its effectiveness may have been heightened by Mr...
...The reason is threefold: 1. The Soviets feel they are no longer encircled by hostile nations...
...For the present, at any rate, neutralization seems more attainable to the Soviet leaders than outright com-munization...
...There was a time when, as victorious allies, we could have imposed from outside a settlement that would neutralize and unify Germany, but now there are two separate states and we wait on events within Germany...
...If there were no armed camps in the Middle East, if in fact there were no arms anywhere in that region, the Czechs would have committed a serious crime by introducing arms in that area...
...The Russian people were not free under the czars, just as we of Southeast Asia were not free under the colonial rule of our European masters...
...It usually takes the form of long-run credits at low interest rates, often with no political obligations discernible on the surface...
...It is you who must accept the fact that times and conditions have changed and that war has become unthinkable...
...They have their answers neatly packaged, but out of the deceptive smoothness comes the harsh fact that the U.S.S.R...
...Almost everything—except creative and courageous leadership and the collective will to harness our great advantages for the decisive struggle of our lifetime...
...But the student from India, the worker from Burma, and the trader from Indonesia see a totally different Soviet Union...
...It is against this backdrop of the almost universal certainty that war is unthinkable—their lingering suspicion of American intentions notwithstanding—that a wandering American like myself sought to assess the expansionist policies of the men in the Kremlin...
...Its ranks are deployed in Central Europe, the Near East, the Middle East, the Far East, and even Latin America—in other words, wherever political institutions are weak and economic need is great...
...that they would under no circumstances permit their Middle Eastern adventure to erupt into even local war...
...But it seems to me that our first step must be to recognize the nature of the peaceful struggle of competitive co-existence...
...We have been recognizing our own past mistakes—and acting on them...
...Three—The rejection of the con-cept of the popular front does not, however, imply the continuation of witch-hunts and self-defeating security restrictions at home...
...Few nations took the frightful pulverizing in World Wars I and II that was the lot of the Russians...
...The central goal of a communized world remains undisturbed, but the means have been altered significantly, and so has the time-table...
...They came away convinced that Soviet science is definitely shifting at least some of its emphasis from military to peacetime research in the realm of nuclear physics...
...This year, when the Kremlin displays interest in the plan, it is dropped altogether by the West...
...Circumstances have changed and we now feel so secure that even if some foreigners come with evil purpose, they could not represent a mortal danger to us...
...Others of equal competence felt certain that the Kremlin goal is more limited, that the Soviets are bent on sharing influence in that area with the West as part of their pursuit of neutralization and Great Power status...
...Whether this will apply to countries like France and Italy, which have powerful Communist Parties, is another question...
...As part of the arrangement they manage to get their own technicians invited to help in the construction...
...on the contrary, they are now ringed by a network of subservient satellites, and they have a powerful Asian ally m Red China...
...It has peacefully ridden out the potentially grave crisis of the period after Stalin's death...
...In the Soviet Union, I was told by one foreign expert, a loan or grant to build, say, a steel mill in India, has at least equal, and sometimes higher, priority than the request from the armed forces for a like amount for a military project...
...would be able to export to them various types of industrial equipment and machinery, including equipment for the petroleum industry, complete production equipment, complete sets of all types of machine tools, automobiles, and agricultural machinery...
...He expressed the conviction that "we are off to a good start in our drive to win the social and economic competition for the uncommitted areas of the world...
...We had to do it—or be destroyed...
...I was to hear it again and again, in much the same language in subsequent talks with Soviet officials, Communist Party functionaries, and editorial spokesmen for the Kremlin...
...Instead of building homes, we have built steel mills...
...We agree wholeheartedly that no arms should be shipped to either side, but this position would raise considerable hell in the United States because then you would not be able to arm your Bagdad Pact allies...
...The Dulles interpretation—that the men were needed in factories to produce more atomic armaments—also irritated some of the diplomats in Western embassies that are friendly to the United States...
...Four—I returned with another old conviction greatly magnified by my experience: domestic politics, once a matter of concern only to ourselves, has increasingly become an inseparable part of foreign policy...
...No amount of insistence on my part that Soviet acts did not seem to square with his words could shake him loose from his bland "of course...
...I don't think anyone can tell yet...
...Dulles' sourly negative response...
...We have our failings...
...A mission of Brazilian congressmen, just returned from a tour through the Soviet Union and her satellites, was greatly impressed with the prospects of increased trade...
...They are told while in Russia, if they weren't told before they left home, that Communism has achieved its great progress in a single generation through the means of socialist state planning on every level of living...
...In the second place, the movement of time and history has transferred the decision from the hands of victorious allies to the peoples of the two Germanies...
...Russian spokesmen, without batting an eyelash, tend to shrug them off as "independent, indigenous movements" with no apron-string ties to the mother country...
...Beyond this fairly obvious estimate I found little agreement among Western specialists on the Middle East...
...It was their judgment that the tough-minded realists in the Kremlin, after going carefully over the entire military situation and the problems of world power and strategy, concluded that large masses of standing armies had become obsolete...
...It no longer fears an internal challenge of its right to rule...
...Dulles, he sometimes seems committed to prolonging and enlarging the cold war...
...What we do and fail to do in developing a stronger economy and in providing greater equality of opportunity...
...The arms sent by the Czechs are only a tiny drop in the ocean...
...This is the official party line...
...Moreover, as the Soviet Union grows stronger, and it is growing stronger all the time, it may decide that Communist parties abroad are more trouble than they are worth, and they may be cut loose to sink or swim on their own...
...But their suspicion is mounting that the West, and most especially the United States, is unwilling to join in a sincere effort to achieve substantial limitation of arms...
...I got the impression from talking with some of them, and with resident foreigners, that most of them go home enormously impressed...
...Everytime I talked with Soviet spokesmen on foreign policy I went away torn by conflicting emotions— a feeling of reassurance that they genuinely mean to avoid war, and along with that a deep concern over their seeming certainty that they were well launched on their way toward achieving their goals without armed force...
...We can wait 10 years, or 50 years, or 100 years...
...The Soviets now agree, but the West has backed away from its own recommendations...
...It is equally difficult to come by something resembling objective truth on other issues of foreign policy...
...There is no color line of any kind, and all are made to feel equally welcome...
Vol. 20 • September 1956 • No. 9
