our Obsolete foreign policy

...WHO are your associates in the A.C.L.U...

...I am encouraged by the outcome of the November elections to believe that citizen action will bring about the long-overdue revision of all of our bankrupt foreign policy...

...Dulles has consistently refused to examine these proposals with a view to ascertaining whether they perhaps contained acceptable points upon which to begin a negotiation...

...In the Middle East, we are bogged down in a morass of shifting quicksand...

...terests became directly involved in that previously intra-European affair...

...The Jacksonian revolution changed the methods but not the aims of this first phase in United States foreign policy...

...They have organized 24 state and regional ACLU affiliates, many of which have local chapters...

...for the first time, its vital inJAMES P. WARBURG is one of the nation's foremost spokesmen on foreign affairs...

...Yet, when Woodrow Wilson endeavored to create a world in which peace might be preserved without power politics, the people refused to follow him...

...Even in our own hemisphere, we are beset with troubles...

...It did not follow that such counteraction should be unilateral, or that the global containment of communism should have become the sole aim of American policy...

...The explosion of these accumulated pressures in 1898 marked the beginning of the third phase...

...They are: a faulty and one-sided analysis of the nature of the postwar world crisis...

...San Francisco Examiner: "The ACLU is worthy of the support of all freedom-loving citizens...

...The Eisenhower Administration has made a travesty of the policy which it inherited, but the basic misconceptions inherent in that policy were present from its inception under the Truman Administration...

...Such an attitude is not an approach to peace...

...The only provocation to action has been a civil liberty endangered...

...His many books include "Victory Without War," "Germany—Key to Peace," "The United States and the Changing World," and "Turning Point Toward Peace...

...The Presidents and the men around them literally "made" foreign policy—especially Washington, Jefferson, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams (the latter as Secretary of State rather than as President...

...The third depends primarily upon our own action...

...Our government has run into a dead-end street with respect to Germany, which is the key to a European peace settlement...

...In many areas, our government is aiming at objectives which could be attained only through the unconditional surrender of our adversaries...

...By the time the pendulum reaction against foreign entanglements had set in, the United States had joined the United Nations and had become semi-committed to the leadership of an anti-Soviet coalition...

...Yet our government has based its containment policy overwhelmingly on military power...

...Because, with the convening of the new 86th Congress which it is hoped will reinforce advances achieved recently in the courts and on other fronts, these are important days for civil liberties—historic days, too, that may enable this generation, in Chief Justice Warren's words, to Eass on a better Bill of Rights, not tarnished by neglect but burnished y growing use...

...We have been playing poker with chips that do not belong to us—chips which no one has authorized us to use...

...American foreign policy continued to be little more than a pursuit of trade advantage and a jealous guardianship of hemispheric interest, until World War I temporarily drew the American people into the vortex of world affairs...

...The third preparatory step would consist in seeking to explore what are actually the minimum demands of our adversaries and to examine these demands with a firm determination to reach settlements fair to all concerned...

...It was citizen action which forced our government to retreat from the brink of catastrophe in the recent Quemoy crisis...

...Yet this was the basis of the policy inaugurated by President Truman more than ten years ago...

...It has spent lavish billions to support obsolete military establishments and only paltry millions to aid the emancipation of two-thirds of the human race from hunger, poverty, disease, and ignorance...

...The power of attraction exercised and exploited by the Communist dictatorships does not derive primarily from their military strength nor from their ideology...

...This crisis is political, psychological, and economic, rather than merely military...

...Durham (N.C...

...a complacent assumption that the Communist dictatorships are likely to mellow or collapse...

...The lesson which our government has been unwilling to learn is, quite simply, that the sole alternative to a nuclear holocaust—or to a continued state of affairs which may at any moment erupt into war—is give-and-take negotiation, no matter how difficult or distasteful such negotiations may be...

...The first step would be for our government to abandon the idea that it can somehow achieve the unconditional surrender of the Communist dictatorships, either by frightening them through a show of strength or by waiting for them to do us the favor of vanishing from the earth...

...Even here at home, our government has, in its obsession with military security, sought to defend freedom by abridging it, thereby defeating its own primary purpose of maintaining ascendancy in scientific and technological development...

...It carries on an active educational program through press, radio, TV, and other information channels...

...New York Times: "The American Civil Liberties Union . . . has been indispensable...

...It has failed lamentably in that it has left the initiative throughout the postwar period to our adversaries and has permitted them to exploit and misguide the two great revolutions of our time—the revolution against colonialism and the revolution of rising expectations...

...At first we sought to contain communism within an iron ring of military alliances, backed by the threat of American air-atomic power...

...We are losing the cold war because we are losing the respect of mankind...

...Minneapolis Morning Tribune: "Americans in every walk of life and of every political complexion, have found the ACLU fighting on their side...

...The blunt truth is that neither we nor our adversaries have the power to enforce any agreements, except by committing suicide...

...Moreover, during the past five years, Democratic opposition leadership has not questioned the basic premises of our foreign policy...

...Its lack of originality and initiative has made it accessory to most of the mistakes committed by the party in power...

...It is true that none of the many Soviet bargaining feelers has presented propositions which we could accept as a whole...

...Because of this, and because the lessons of 1919-1920 had not been forgotten, a resurgence of isolationist sentiment was delayed...

...During this period, the United States was transformed into an almost self-sufficient unit of industrial and agricultural production, delivering an increasing annual surplus for sale in foreign markets...

...That lession is that the nuclear arms race is suicidal madness, no matter whether we are temporarily behind or ahead of the Russians...

...our Obsolete foreign policy by JAMES P. WARBURG When The Progressive was founded in 1909 by Robert M. Lafollette, Sr., the United States had already passed through two distinct phases of foreign policy development and was in the midst of a third...

...Ironically, the means chosen by our government to fight the one threat to peace which it recognized were means whose usefulness we ourselves had destroyed when we opened the door into the atomic age...

...We are defeating ourselves because we are acting as if we were the world's paramount power, as if we possessed omniscience as well as omnipotence, and as if we had the right to decide for all humanity at what point race suicide becomes preferable to further Communist encroachment...

...and that it cannot be halted so long as the great political and economic problems which create acute tensions remain unsolved...

...But Mr...

...We know also that they would like to get American forces out of Europe and that, for such a withdrawal, they might pay a considerable price in liberating their East European satellites...

...an obsessive reliance upon obsolete military power...

...extend this invitation to you at this time...

...WHERE do you go to join?—NOWHERE—just fill out coupon below...

...In the succeeding period, from 1848 to 1898, the United States can scarcely be said to have had a foreign policy at all...

...Morning Herald: "The ACLU's mission is to fight for the . . . rights guaranteed by the Constitution . . . and it is a fight that's never won...

...All three efforts must be pursued simultaneously...

...Failure now to recognize, at last, the basic reasons for the bankruptcy of our diplomacy is almost certain to lead to complete disaster...

...and an apparent unwillingness to seek peaceful settlements through patient diplomacy...

...Secretary of State John Foster Dulles has frequently said that he can see no point in talking to the Russians...

...But to do that we need help...

...This policy of continental expansion and overseas trade development was skilfully and consistently pursued...

...In the as yet incomplete fifth phase of American foreign policy, the United States has definitely assumed leadership without, so far, understanding the changed and changing nature of the world which it is trying to lead...

...From this brief involvement they recoiled in disgust at European "power politics...

...The people were little interested in the world around them, except to the extent of wishing to expand overseas trade and to prevent any foreign encroachment upon their hemispheric preserve...

...The fourth phase of American foreign policy began with the outbreak of World War II and marked the reluctant assumption by the United States of great-power responsibility...

...With the Board and National Committee officers listed here, the Union's 44,000 members are men and women in all walks of life—-the law, teaching, business, etc...

...He has regularly denounced them as "insincere propaganda," demanding that the Russians prove their good faith "by deeds rather than words...

...It is an invitation to increased tension, exacerbated hostility, and suicidal war...

...Obsessed with a war psychology, our government has been blind to the true nature of the world crisis...

...The postwar period began auspiciously with the United States taking the lead in UNRRA, in establishing the World Bank, and, above all, in launching the Marshall Plan...

...The first atomic explosion at Alamagordo foreshadowed the end of the long era in which military force served as an effective instrument of national policy...

...in working through the channels of public opinion and of the law to see that our constitutional principles as expressed in the Bill of Rights remain a living force...

...Two—To what extent will a "loyal opposition," in control of both houses of Congress, develop a constructive initiative...

...By "definition" I obviously do not mean a public announcement which would destroy our bargaining position...

...It is true that a handful of Democratic Senators and Representatives have shown deep insight and creative imagination, but these men have been mavericks in their party and their advice has been disregarded as much by their own party leadership as by the Administration...

...The policy deriving from this myopic view of a world in revolution —the policy of military containment —has had disastrous consequences...

...The next step would be to make a careful determination of what are actually the irreducible demands that we and our friends must insist upon...

...Much as one may honor these mavericks, the fact remains that it ill behooves either party as such to blame the other for the predicament in which the United States now finds itself...

...At the time when The Progressive was founded, few Americans understood that from then on, if they wished to live in peace, they would have to assume a share of the burden of maintaining peace...

...WHAT does the A.C.L.U...

...that it leads to war by accident if not by design...

...Since this was a period of relative peace and stability in the world, there were few external pressures demanding the formulation of an American foreign policy, but powerful internal pressures for foreign expansion were accumulating...

...The three major aims of negotiation should be: One—Halting the further distribution of nuclear weapons in order to gain a breathing-space for the negotiation of political settlements...

...Such a meeting would serve no purpose unless it were preceded by much patient and quiet spadework...

...Yet there are few signs of any such recognition on the part of the President, the Secretary of State, or on the part of the "loyal opposition...

...In the early years of the nation, our foreign policy pursued two clearly distinguishable aims: (1) The establishment of a transcontinental nation dominating the hemisphere...

...Even before Germany and Japan were defeated, Soviet Russia loomed upon the horizon as a possible menace to world peace...

...it has merely criticized its execution...

...The United States had become one of the great world powers, but the American people rejected the alternatives open to them: they declined to participate in traditional balance-of-power alliances...

...In the name of democracy, our government has supported selfishly oppressive anti-democratic regimes, provided only that these regimes would become its military allies in the anti-Communist crusade...

...This means banning test explosions—in any case a moral imperative—and placing an embargo on nuclear weapons, weapons parts, and information as to their manufacture...

...This is still our policy...

...When Russia, too, acquired air-atomic power, our government launched a crash program to develop the hydrogen An invitation to all the readers of this 50th Anniversary Issue of The PROGRESSIVE . . . to become members of the American Civil Liberties Union Why does the A.C.L.U...

...With the annexation of Texas and the war against Mexico, the sword, rather than the pen, became the instrument of transcontinental expansion...

...and (2) the expansion and protection of American trade abroad...

...Whatever their ultimate motives, the Russians have put forward repeated proposals for negotiation from which it is not too difficult to deduce at least in part what they would or would not be willing to do...

...To do these things requires not only courage and determination but that rarest of all qualities among statesmen—the willingness to recognize past error...

...We know, for example, that the Russians will never agree to the reunification of Germany on terms which would permit all of Germany to become a partner in the anti-communist NATO alliance...

...it could no longer expect to exploit Europe's wars as a neutral...

...We know also that, a few months later—in February 1957—the Russians proposed a mutual hands-off agreement in the Middle East, including an arms embargo and the stripping of all political conditions from economic aid...

...HOW does it carry out these aims and beliefs...

...The American people were somewhat like a large farm family, constantly seeking to enlarge the farm, to fence it in securely, and to discover and develop means by which the farm's products might profitably be exchanged for other goods...

...Two — Arriving at settlements which will neutralize the major areas of potential conflict—in other words, disengagement in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East...

...WHAT does the press say of the work done by the A.C.L.U...

...Since its founding in 1920, the Union has been the one organization in America devoted solely to guarding the Bill of Rights: freedom of inquiry and expression for everybody, due process of law and fair trial for everybody, equality before the law for everybody...

...We are defeating ourselves...

...a misreading of both the nature and the direction of the Communist threat...

...Unlike World War I, the second great conflict did not eliminate the visible external threat to American security...

...These men pursued their aims primarily by diplomacy, taking advantage of the preoccupation of the European nations with a balance-of-power struggle from which they kept the United States aloof...

...and, when Russia came into possession of this newest instrument of mass murder, our government staked this nation's security and the security of mankind upon keeping ahead of Russia in the race to develop ever more fearful weapons of destruction...

...The failure of our postwar foreign policy is not a partisan matter...

...and they rejected as well the opportunity to take part in the new experiment in collective security...

...It opened with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's belated effort to persuade the American people that their vital interests were at stake in the outcome of the war in Europe...

...In the Far East, our government's unrealistic and stubborn inflexibility has taken us from crisis to crisis...

...Our government has sent arms to people who wanted help in establishing their independence and in developing their economies...

...The time has passed when the preservation of peace can be entrusted to defensive alliances...

...It has proposed no alternative courses of action...

...The fact that they are doing this at the expense of individual freedom means little to peoples who have never known the meaning of freedom...

...And, for the first time, the United States acquired a direct interest in the preservation of world peace...

...and that the only hope of reaching such agreements and thereby avoiding war is through give-and-take negotiation...

...I do not despair, simply because I believe in the decency, humanity, and common sense of the American people, and because the American people seem, at long last, to be awakening to their responsibility...

...It is a crisis composed of many factors which have little or nothing to do with Sino-Soviet expansionism or international Communist conspiracy...

...Most of our European allies reject this intransigence, demanding a careful exploration of any proposals put forward by the Soviet government...

...The American people, however, were far from realizing this basic change in the relationship of their country to the rest of the world...

...It is high time to recognize the painful truth that practically the whole of our government's well-intentioned foreign policy is obsolete and in need of drastic revision...

...Now is the best time in the ACLU's forty years to further the cause of human rights...

...that agreements fair to all concerned require no enforcement...

...None of our European allies and very few of our friends in Asia support our even more intransigent position with respect to China...

...By the annexation of the Philippines, the conversion of the Open Door Policy into a guarantee of Chinese integrity, the mediation of the Russo-Japanese war, and the meddling of President Theodore Roosevelt in the Morocco crisis, the United States injected itself into the balance-of-power struggle...

...stand for...

...The chief reasons for our government's failure to meet the challenge of world leadership are not difficult to identify...

...This is tantamount to demanding that the adversary make, prior to negotiation, precisely those concessions which might conceivably be obtained through negotiation...

...The time has come when the existence of military alliances and counter-alliances is more likely to provoke than to prevent conflict...

...As might be expected, it has achieved success only in the face of overt physical aggression—in Greece, in Berlin, and in Korea...

...We need you...

...to strengthen ACLU work where it already exists...

...The American people were at first deeply concerned with trying to escape from fratricidal conflict, then with fighting it, and then with reshaping their nation and with the pursuit of private profit...

...This does not mean that what is now needed is another "summit meeting...

...Only last January, President Eisenhower re-stated President Truman's oversimplified analysis of the world crisis in almost identical words when he said in his inaugural address: "The threat to our security and to the hope of a peaceful world is simply stated: It is Communist imperialism...

...It derives from the simple fact that these dictatorships are succeeding in lifting masses of backward people into the Twentieth Century in a single generation...

...The fact that complacency, wasteful incompetence, false economy, and self-defeating secrecy have permitted the Soviet Union to overhaul the United States in the arms race is a blow to our prestige, but this is less important than the fact that our government still has not learned the basic lesson of the new era which we ourselves initiated at Alamagordo...

...The ACLU defends the Bill of Rights in the courts, in legislative bodies and in executive agencies—federal, state and municipal...

...to start it in new areas, as in the South...

...They said so in their note of November 17, 1956...

...Worst of all, this policy has made the United States into a status quo power in a period of rapid and ineluctable change...

...During this period, the United States was essentially an agricultural country with a rapidly growing commercial trading interest...

...We are not being defeated in the cold war by our Communist adversaries...

...that the race for military ascendancy cannot be won...

...The fact that neither side can afford to abandon its structure of alliances, so long as the great political and economic issues remain unsettled, makes all the more urgent the need for negotiation...

...Again and again he has expressed his distrust of negotiations and warned against entering into agreements with Russia unless we had the military power to enforce them...

...From this excellent beginning, American postwar policy has receded into growing ineffectuality...

...Pearl Harbor cut short the debate before the people had come to a decision and catapulted the United States into world leadership...

...We have been gambling with the lives of humanity in a game which, it is all too clear, humanity does not approve...

...The two great questions are: One—To what extent will the Eisenhower Administration show itself capable of learning from past mistakes...

...Three—Drastically re-thinking and reorganizing our niggardly and ineffective foreign economic aid programs and channeling them through some form of international organization...

...For the next 20 years, the United States reverted to the isolationist illusion, garnished with neutrality legislation, disarmament treaties, and formal agreements renouncing wars...

...As for China, our government is only just beginning to face the fact that its 600 million people are ruled not by Chiang Kai-shek on his island refuge but by a firmly established government at Peiping...

...The first two efforts require negotiated agreement with our adversaries...

...It may justly be maintained that Stalin's early postwar policies in Europe—whether motivated by fear or aggressive imperialism, or by a combination of both—forced the United States to take counter-action...

...Definition of minimum objectives is fundamental to the formulation of any national policy...

...bomb...