A SELF-DEFEATING COURSE
A Self-Defeating Course DEPENDENCE ON military alliances and hand-outs of military aid, and an arrogant insistence that other nations join our anti-Communist front or suffer the consequences,...
...Meanwhile, the problems of political instability and economic distress, which lie at the heart of the crisis in the Middle East, remain unresolved, providing fertile soil for the corrupt seed of Communism...
...Much the same thing happened recently on America's billion-dollar military base on Okinawa...
...When we began to pour armaments into the countries surrounding them, the Egyptians and Syrians turned, inevitably, to the Soviet Union for counterbalancing assistance...
...Even Mr...
...A series of local elections resulted in the Communists running second in Jakarta, the capital, and first in the other two leading cities, Bandung and Surabaya...
...Under our harsh either-or policy we continued to drive Egypt and Syria more firmly into Soviet arms...
...We have provided India a modest amount, of economic aid, but by arming Pakistan, we have obliged India to spend about twice as much in developing her defenses against Pakistan than we have made available for the betterment of the people of India...
...military command...
...It is here that the Soviet Union has the advantage over us"— in holding out deceptively simple answers to people hungering for a better stake in life...
...Kerala is the most literate state in India—about 30 per cent, compared with seven per cent for the whole country—and, significantly, it has the highest rate of educated unemployed...
...nounced, and we would fight if necessary, in the face of aggression by a nation dominated by international Communism...
...Dulles declined to say what could or should be done because to do so, he said, would be interfering with the internal policies of other countries...
...In the case of Syria, for example, it is no secret that we did everything in our power to weaken its government and cripple its economy...
...There were other provisions containing the usual Soviet boobytraps, but they were not fatal to the whole program and could certainly have been the subject of give-and-take bargaining...
...But our government summarily dismissed the whole scheme as unworthy of negotiation...
...For the first time in the ten-year history of free India, the Communists captured control of an entire state—in a free election...
...But India, which proudly persists in her neutrality, declined to become our military partner...
...This is pure nonsense, for Mr...
...The two principal features of that program were agreement on a complete moratorium of arms shipments to all nations in the area and the inauguration of a joint program of economic aid without political or military strings...
...The Soviets responded with alacrity...
...This has meant, automatically, that she has received many millions of dollars worth of American arms...
...And across the seas, in British Guiana, a crown colony on the northeast coast of South America, the people voted, for the second time in four years, for the pro-Communist People's Progressive Party...
...Dulles is forever interfering wherever he can to add another military alliance to his string...
...We would provide arms to anti-Communist nations, we an...
...Much the same can be said about all of Asia and Africa, which are newly struggling up to freedom and independence...
...In Naha, capital city of Okinawa, Communist-line Mayor Kamejiro Senaga was forced into an election designed to throw him out of office...
...Today, pro-Communist forces are firmly entrenched in strategic Syria, but the Eisenhower Doctrine is worse than useless because there has been no overt aggression...
...it wasn't until the United States inspired the Bagdad Pact, as part of its basic strategy of building anti-Communist alliances, that the Russians found an open gate...
...Communists have now succeeded in capturing local political control of Java, home of 55 million of Indonesia's 82,000,000 poulation...
...Our policy of arming anyone who will sign an anti-Communist alliance has corrupted the revolution of rising expectations and turned infant nations into armed camps before they could achieve political and economic stability...
...Recent developments in the Middle East, notably Syria, and free elections in India, Indonesia, Okinawa, and British Cuiana underscore the melancholy conclusion that the Communists are achieving spectacular gains in strategic areas of the world without firing a shot or invoking military threats...
...Here, in five widely diverse countries—Syria, India, Okinawa, Indonesia, and British Guiana, scattered on the map from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic —Communism has achieved its greatest gains in a decade—without firing a shot...
...A Self-Defeating Course DEPENDENCE ON military alliances and hand-outs of military aid, and an arrogant insistence that other nations join our anti-Communist front or suffer the consequences, remain the heart of American foreign policy despite mounting evidence that this emphasis defeats our own purpose and plays squarely into Communist hands...
...there has been only the decision of the Syrian government to collaborate with the Soviet Union—partly because of economic and military pressures exerted by the United States in its you-are-either-for-us-or-for-the-Communists foreign policy...
...This, it seems to us, was a fatal error, for if there are two things the Middle East needs more than anything else they are an end to the arms race and a program of economic improvement...
...After shaking up its military leadership to transfer control to pro-Soviet forces, the Syrian regime negotiated a f300,000,000 loan with the Kremlin to tide it over its economic crisis...
...India, on which so many of our hopes rest in Asia, is the classic example...
...Dulles is now alarmed...
...Their real concern, as they win political independence, is how to raise their standard of living, how to modernize their backward economies...
...We have to carry greater burdens...
...Our worldwide network of military alliances, and the billions of dollars we are pouring into the building of anti-Communist military machines in more than a score of nations, have proved utterly futile in preventing the most decisive Soviet advances since China went Communist nearly a decade ago...
...If Mr...
...It was only this year that we proclaimed the Eisenhower Doctrine, amid great fanfare, as the most effective way to "stop Communism" in the Middle East...
...A similar development occurred 2500 miles south of Okinawa, in Indonesia...
...Here, in areas of the world into which we have poured billions of dollars in arms, the Communists have won governments or won peoples in free elections without embarking on the kind of military aggression our foreign policy is designed to meet...
...In discussing the grave reverses India is encountering in her present five-year plan, he said: "We are very grateful for the help that we have received, but it is an odd thing that while we are helped, other conditions are produced that wash out that help...
...The Middle East, which lies at the Soviets' doorstep, has long been the Object of Russian ambitions, under the czars no less than under the commissars...
...This, inevitably, has weakened the Indian economy and strengthened the appeal of Communist propaganda in India...
...Here it was ballots, not bullets, that won, for Communism...
...he strengthened his hold on Okinawa's highest elective office, and in the process defeated the combined conservative forces supported by the U.S...
...Nearly nine months ago the Soviet government proposed a six-point program for the Middle East which we of The Progressive implored President Eisenhower to accept, not in its entirety, but as the basis for negotiation...
...The Syrian pound dropped sharply in world markets as a result of an American financial squeeze...
...At a recent press conference he expressed the view that Communist victories in local elections in India and Indonesia represented a dangerous trend...
...Her unfriendly neighbor, Pakistan, has signed up as a member of our anti-Communist club...
...We solicited membership in our Bagdad Pact, but Egypt and Syria, preferring a neutral course, refused to join our club...
...The Russians were thwarted for centuries...
...Walter Lippmann expressed the failure of American policy with great clarity recently when he said: "The Syrian coup is only one of many signs that the Dulles pacts and the Eisenhower Doctrine do not come to grips with the real concern of the people of Asia and Africa...
...Syria turned to Moscow again...
...The best evidence available indicates that a great many of those who voted Communist are not Communists, but cast their votes as they did because they felt it was their only way of voicing their protest against what had become an intolerable economic situation...
...Prime Minister Nehru emphasized India's plight in a recent address to the Indian Parliament...
...But Mr...
...These developments led the United States, consistent as always in its belief that military aid will solve all problems, to embark on a dramatic airlift of arms to nations surrounding Syria...
...But the mayor not only won...
...Prime Minister Nehru might well have had in mind what happened this year in the state of Kerala...
...The result has been to drive the Syrian government closer still to Moscow—and to cause grave concern not only in Israel but among our Arab friends in the Middle East who can see first-hand how our relentless anti-Communism plays into Communist hands...
...Dulles would face up to the causes of Communist advances, if he would recognize the self-defeating character of his almost exclusive emphasis on military containment, he might discover a form of interference highly prized by the countries concerned—a negotiated end to the suicidal arms race and a United Nations economic development program that would strike at the political instability and economic insecurity that make for both conflict and Communism...
Vol. 21 • October 1957 • No. 10
