WHO SPEAKS FOR PEACE?
Who Speaks for Peace? OUT OF the cackle of confusion that accompanies the Soviet Sputniks whirling in outer space come half a dozen dominant themes. There are those who plead for a czar of all the...
...While we dream of this happy ending, we continue to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the deteriorating regime of aging Chiang Kai-shek, which we delude ourselves into thinking is the government of China...
...Precious few—and no one at all in authority...
...Khrushchev, for all his boorish boasting of Soviet success with Sputnik, makes a great deal of sense to most of the rest of the world when he says, in urging a summit conference of the great powers: "We do not assert that there can be complete harmony between socialism [communism] and capitalism...
...The Russian moves increase our own fears of aggression," he said...
...Therefore, we search for more power to defend ourselves...
...Our failure to recognize that fact, along with Soviet intransigence, have reduced recent negotiations to the destructive needling of which James Reston wrote...
...The fact that she is a power there is clear to even the most casual reader of newspaper headlines, but our State Department cherishes its little fantasies even if the result is to play into Soviet hands...
...It means mutual discussion looking toward mutual agreement...
...Pearson to the urgent conclusion that we must recognize the Soviet Union for the power she is and negotiate with her patiently and persistently in the pursuit of accommodations that may be achieved on a basis of mutual tolerance and self-interest and without the sacrifice of principle...
...But in the hard and sour realities of world politics, good intentions are not a policy...
...And yet negotiation based on historical facts represents the only alternative to a resumption of the suicidal arms race...
...All of them seem exclusively concerned with outstripping the Russians in developing our capacity for the push-button delivery of hydrogen warheads across the seas and continents...
...For all the debasement of the word by politicians and the press, negotiation does not mean appeasement or surrender...
...Mostly, however, failure originated in the suspicion and fear of each side toward the other —emotions which hardened into a refusal by both sides to negotiate on a give-and-take basis in the interest of achieving world stability...
...Three times we refused because we felt that to negotiate with the Soviets in the Middle East would be to recognize her as a power in that region...
...Both sides, and especially the Soviet Union, have been more interested in scoring propaganda points than in finding the basis for agreement...
...In this connection James Reston of the New York Times recently wrote words of wisdom for American policymakers...
...Speaking last month in Minneapolis, while everyone in Washington iVas playing with space helmets...
...Every Western statesman, however much he might feel the Russians are wrong to fear NATO, knows this Soviet fear is genuine...
...All these are urged on us in the name of catching up with and surpassing the Russians in the dark art of push-button warfare...
...nor does it do any good in trying to cut through it, merely to assume that all is right on our side and wrong on the other...
...Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives—all are currently competing to view with alarm, or point with pride, or nail down the "I-told-you-sos" for the next political campaign...
...It is difficult for us to swallow the harsh fact that the Soviets have arrived as a dominant power on the world scene, but swallow it we must if there is to be any hope of achieving those enduring settlements without which there can be no peace...
...If Khrushchev is lying, if his challenge is lined with booby-traps, we'll find out in time...
...Indeed, all history shows that unless we do something about it, the second will ultimately lead to the first...
...Almost everyone with a title in both political parties has had his say, from the President on down, but nobody in authority we know about has •aid: "Look, this crazy race will never stop until we're all blown to bits— unless we begin now to think and plan for peace with a fraction of the thought and energy and money we are pouring into the making of missiles...
...It was in response to this suggestion that our State Department responded with "chilly disinterest," to quote the New York Times...
...As Lippmann has said, "If there is a single responsible and informed man who, when he is off the record, believes in this fairy tale, I have never met him...
...We would be under no compulsion to accept terms which violated our principles...
...Must we wait for a political Sputnik before we face up to the myths on which our foreign policy m,:1 based...
...There are situations in the world today that do not admit of any permanent solution which will bring about stability without Russian participation in, or at least acceptance of, that solution...
...there are those who contend for vastly increased appropriations for education, especially education in science, and there are those who speak for a relaxation of stifling security restrictions and an end to the remnants of McCarthyism...
...Pearson quietly pointed out that our frenzied response to Sputniks I and II intensifies an already perilous arms race...
...And yet, year after year our only proposal to the Kremlin is that they permit our ally, West Germany, to take over the Soviet satellite, East Germany, and let the united nation become the most powerful European force in NATO...
...A foreigner does...
...We would have every opportunity to expose his chicanery if that is what it turned out to be...
...Who in the United States sees in the fact of intercontinental delivery of hydrogen warheads mankind's greatest challenge to negotiate an end to the suicidal arms race...
...a Canadian...
...Lester Pearson expressed it for us when he said: "If and when Russia has a legitimate interest in some area or some development, we would be foolish to act as if that interest can either be ignored or attacked...
...Isn't this the moment to pause just long enough to think through the possibility of negotiation based on historical facts...
...Nor has anyone else, yet this fairy tale is our only policy toward Germany, the area which is the key to settlement in Europe...
...to wrap ourselves in a cloak of impeccable rectitude and diplomatic rigidity...
...These greatly telescoped interpretations of the historical facts in three decisive areas of the world may suffer from oversimplification but they are perilously close to the truth...
...Mr...
...It is a vicious, and it could be a fatal circle...
...However, this does not exclude peaceful competition between the socialist and capitalist countries...
...Negotiation based on historical facts will require that we have a hard look at the policies we are pursuing...
...There are those who plead for a czar of all the missiles to end the bickering among the armed forces, for billions more for arms and a crash program in missiles and satellites...
...If we do that, we are bound to discover that some of these policies are not based on historical facts, but rather on self-deceiving fairy tales...
...This is expensive day-dreaming— expensive not only in dollars but in the price we pay in prestige in the Far East...
...For, as Walter Lippmann has emphasized, it is because of our fundamentally false estimate of the realities of power in Eastern Asia that "our prestige has been declining long before the launching of Sputnik...
...Our Sputniks are circling around the earth and waiting for the American and other Sputniks to join them and form a community of Sputniks...
...What is happening now is that the two sides are not negotiating but needling each other, and the needling is merely increasing the vast barrier of distrust which lies at the heart of the problem...
...The basic fallacy which underlies virtually all of American foreign policy derives from our refusal to recognize the fact that the Soviets may have genuine concerns and legitimate interests in areas in which we or our allies have long been supreme...
...Europe: The historical fact is that Russia, twice invaded by Germany in one generation, fears a reunified Germany that would be a military partner of the West in NATO...
...Isn't there someone in Washington who can be spared from Sputnik to ponder the prospects of negotiated settlements even while the rest go forward with the task of overhauling the Soviets...
...His name is Lester Pearson...
...Pearson has said what many Americans in public life have thought but dared not say publicly—that the alternatives to negotiated settlements with the Soviet Union are 1) nuclear war which would result in total destruction for all, or 2) "suspension between uneasy peace and global war in a state of tension and fear...
...We might as well admit, that hard fact...
...But who speaks for peace...
...Why...
...It also weakens our position in those nations which have no love for Communism but refuse, for reasons which seem perfectly good to them, to take sides in the Cold War...
...Such an attitude, of course, plays into the hands of the worst elements in the Kremlin...
...Isn't it time someone in authority spoke for peace...
...Negotiation of the kind Reston discussed will not be easy—in fact it may require a more agonizing reappraisal of ourselves than the soul-searching that followed the launching of the Soviet Sputniks...
...Our aims are no doubt righteous...
...Commenting on his celebrated interview with Nikita Khrushchev, boss man of the Soviet Union, Reston summarized: "After listening to and reflecting upon Khrushchev's harrangues, one had the impression that the negotiations of the last year or so had merely bred contempt on both sides and that the time had come either to negotiate seriously on the basis of historical facts or to refuse to do so and concentrate our diplomacy on the strengthening of the West...
...Who speaks for peace...
...Three times during this year the Kremlin has proposed negotiation of an agreement which would neutralize the area by embargoing the shipment of all arms by any power to any nation in the Middle East...
...The Middle East: The historical facts are that the Soviet Union is the greatest power bordering on the Middle East and that for the first time in history she has gained a foothold in this strategic area, however much we may hate the idea...
...One alternative is only worse than the other...
...A community of this kind, a competition of this kind, will be far better than the competition of the armaments race, or the manufacture of lethal weapons...
...Everything that has happened since Sputniks I and II sailed into outer space would indicate that we have chosen the latter course, for we have jeeringly rejected Khrushchev's new invitations to negotiation and are pouring all our fright and all our fury into a vast effort to catch up with and surpass the Soviets in the rocket and missile fields...
...Pearson believes in the need for preparedness until disarmament can be negotiated, but he believes fervently in the urgent need for negotiation with the Soviets—negotiation based on a recognition of the fact that the Russians may have legitimate interests in areas of the world from which we have sought to bar them...
...What are we afraid of...
...Our cozy notion that the Soviets know nothing of science and technology except what their spies can steal from the West has now been exposed for the myth it is...
...Yet we stubbornly pursue the policy of believing that the Red regime will collapse if we pretend it doesn't exist...
...they have carried to the conference table take-it-or-leave-it demands rarely grounded in the realities of the world situation...
...This has often not been the pattern of past negotiations...
...there are those who argue for more respect and greater rewards for egg-heads, especially scientists, and most especially scientists with a genius for rocketry...
...A glance at American foreign policy in these tension areas of the world may help to illuminate this point...
...It is seeing the alternatives with great clarity and responding to their challenge with equal courage that propels Mr...
...Here, clearly, is the choice we face —genuine negotiation based on historical facts or an intensification of the arms race...
...Formerly Canada's foreign minister, he won the Nobel Prize for Peace this year...
...where peace will balance precariously on the knife edge of terror, with the outer spaces cluttered up with satellites shot there by rockets which could as easily be used to carry nuclear warheads designed not to stay up with the stars, but to descend on us mortals...
...The Far East: The historical fact is that the Communists are the government of China...
...Frequently, as The Progressive has pointed out over the years, American negotiators, under both Democratic and Republican Administrations, have refused to recognize the facts of international life...
...What do we have to lose by trying—except the Dulles fairy tales which may sweep us to disaster if we persist in retaining them as the cornerstone of American foreign policy...
Vol. 21 • December 1957 • No. 12
