'The Foul Winds of War'
PROGRESSIVE "YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE" 'The Foul Winds of War9 THIS HAS BEEN a month of deepening despair in the quest for peace—a month in which the hope for...
...It will take a high order of statesmanship at home, Walter Lippmann wrote recently, to repair the damage that has been done to our bargaining position as the result of recent developments...
...He was moving on the right track, in our judgment, when he calmly refused to announce renewal of United States testing after the Soviet decision became known, but he was derailed during the same week when he capitulated to new pressures and took the easy way out...
...f Soviet strategists successfully insisted that Russia was lagging perilously behind the United States in the development of medium-sized nuclear weapons...
...The assertion that we are committed to "standing firm" on Berlin is not a policy but a slogan...
...President Kennedy briefly recognized the need to discuss hard and unpopular truths with the people in his July 25 speech to the country in which he acknowledged the presence of "irritants" for the Soviet Union in West Berlin and added: "We recognize the Soviet Union's historical concern about their security in Central and Eastern Europe after a series of ravaging invasions—and we believe arrangements can be worked out [to alleviate] those concerns...
...More recently, he told the ambassador from Ceylon: "The dangerous problems of the day, we are convinced, can and should be solved by sincere negotiations so that a just and durable peace may be established firmly and the energies of all nations may be directed to the improvement of living standards and the pursuit of a better and happier life for all peoples...
...Khrushchev, none from Mr...
...His mind is not cluttered up with rigid commitments to the technicalities of the past...
...Many theories have been advanced to explain the Kremlin's decision...
...This should help enormously if and when negotiations begin...
...Kennedy, perhaps lacking a basic approach to some of the issues of foreign policy, seems so whiplashed by conflicting counsel that he yields now to one point of view and soon to another quite different...
...There was condemnation of the Soviets all right, the most savage from commentators and Congressmen who, just the day before and for many weeks before that, had demanded that the United States take precisely the same step for which they were now damning the Kremlin—the unilateral resumption of nuclear testing...
...We confess to having no inside information, but we suggest that one or a combination of these reasons could be responsible: f Premier Nikita Khrushchev, caught up in a bitter political struggle within the Communist camp, yielded, perhaps against his better judgment, to the pressures of his own military clique and those of the belligerent leaders of Communist China...
...government to its own citizens and to the security of other free nations...
...Again we have no inside information, but we suspect that, much as Mr...
...President Kennedy has also displayed a marked ambivalence on the subject of negotiation with the Soviets, especially over the worsening crisis in Berlin...
...But only a few days before, in his first response to the Soviet resumption of testing, he had indicated that we would not resume testing, at least not immediately, and had gone on to assure us "and the other free nations" that our existing stockpile of nuclear weapons "is wholly adequate for the defense needs of the United States and the free world...
...A new opportunity to make a fresh start awaits Mr...
...We believe that what Ambassador George F. Kennan, one of our ablest students of the Soviet Union, said in another connection is applicable to the crisis over Berlin: "We will never know whether the Soviet leaders will go through an open door until we stop trying to push them through a closed one...
...Besides insight and imagination it will need the kind of moral courage which is rare, the courage to tell the people hard and unpopular truths which it has long been thought inexpedient to speak out about...
...We have no other choice," said President Kennedy, "in fulfillment of the responsibilities of the U.S...
...There were only two weeks to go before the United Nations Assembly would convene, but Mr...
...There are times, and this is one of them, when Mr...
...But these are not insurmountable barriers if there is a determined will to achieve negotiated settlements...
...Kennedy now...
...But this short passage was engulfed by the rest of a speech that emphasized military build-up to preserve the status quo in Berlin...
...We hope the President makes the most of this chance, however great may be the rocket-rattling provocations of the Kremlin...
...Coming as it did, on the eve of the Belgrade conference of "non-aligned" nations, the Soviet announcement revealed a brutal contempt for "neutral" opinion, while its decision to test in, and thus poison, the atmosphere disclosed a shocking irresponsibility toward all mankind...
...Kennedy could not wait...
...These are fine phrases, and we applaud them unreservedly, but up to the point we were writing this in midSeptember, the President had made no move to translate his words into action...
...Such statesmanship," he warns us, "does not come cheaply...
...Khrushchev may have done, the President retreated under pressure from the military crowd in the Pentagon and in Congress...
...Yet Mr...
...But we failed miserably on the second count when we proclaimed our own policy of embarking on new nuclear testing...
...The convening of the United Nations this month makes possible a preliminary round of discussion at the foreign minister level—discussion which would be designed to pave the way for full scale negotiations...
...Kennedy has done little to prepare public opinion to understand that we will have to give as well as take during negotiations, that a settlement which falls short of what we would regard as the perfect solution does not in itself mean appeasement...
...T h e Kremlin decided that resumption of tests would add a new dimension of terror to its strategy for achieving a settlement of the crisis over Berlin on its own terms...
...We are mindful of the difficulties that confront the President—the Kremlin's bullying tactics and the powerful resistance at home to negotiation, which is falsely equated with appeasement...
...How else can one account for his sudden decision to test after having assured the nation and the free world that we possess a "wholly adequate" stockpile of nuclear weapons...
...Whatever the reason, and it might well be something far afield from anything we have suggested, the Soviet decision provided the United States with an extraordinary opportunity to assume world leadership for peace by condemning the Kremlin's criminal conduct but refraining from testing ourselves until we could place the whole issue before the United Nations Assembly, which was then about, to convene...
...The Kremlin's cynical decision to resume the testing of nuclear weapons torpedoed three years of patient negotiations to achieve an enforcible moratorium and triggered new tensions in a world tormented with recurring crises...
...But what is lacking is any evidence that we have a policy to propose or a position to take at the bargaining table...
...It was the month in which the Soviets slammed shut the gates from East to West Berlin and then embarked on unilateral resumption of nuclear testing even as the test ban conference was still in session in Geneva...
...Every proposal for negotiation has come from Mr...
...He will negotiate in good faith but he will not be bullied...
...It is comforting to learn from so accurate an observer as Reston that the President is not married to a rigid formula or the technicalities of the past...
...His emotions are not engaged in the defense of lines on the map...
...Kennedy...
...In his July 25 address to the nation on Berlin, the Chief Executive urgently emphasized the need for negotiation...
...PROGRESSIVE "YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE" 'The Foul Winds of War9 THIS HAS BEEN a month of deepening despair in the quest for peace—a month in which the hope for negotiated settlements between the Soviets and ourselves flickered ever more feebly in what India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru called "the foul winds of war...
...In a recent column, James Reston, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, reported his impression that President Kennedy "is not wedded to any formula for Berlin save the genuine preservation of its freedom and the preservation of the honor of the United States...
Vol. 25 • October 1961 • No. 10
