WORDS AND DEEDS
Words and Deeds Elsewhere in this issue Chester Bowles, Special Representative and Adviser to the President on African, Asian, and Latin American Affairs, records his assessment of Mr. Kennedy's...
...The Kennedy Administration's answer, up to now, has been a uniformly depressing negative...
...The United States has no liking for that government, no reason to regard it as anything but restlessly aggressive abroad and viciously tyrannical at home...
...But having said this, he went on to signal the start of our role in a new and deadlier cycle in the arms race...
...The Administration has turned its back on these widely embraced plans for negotiated denuclearization without ever coming up with affirmative alternatives...
...In the face of the joint judgment by the physicist chosen by the President to head the evaluation of the Soviet tests and by the man who serves as White House adviser on science, it seems evident that Mr...
...Marquis Childs...
...Rather it would appear that he succumbed to pressure from the Pentagon in an area of foreign policy that is far too critical to be decided by generals and admirals...
...Indeed, we seem to have capitulated to Diem's insistence on being anti-Communist without being for anything that might build the social and economic foundations of a democratic society whose inner strength could withstand the subversive infiltration of Communism...
...The purpose of the new programs, he tells us, is "to give special inducements to those governments which are determined to develop their own resources, to institute internal reforms, and to allow greater individual opportunity and justice with maximum freedom of choice...
...We confess to no technical competence in the field, but it doesn't seem to us to require a vast store of nuclear knowledge to face up to the simple question that the President failed to answer: Why, if we now have at instant readiness a nuclear supply capable of "overkilling" the world's population by ten times, is it necessary to test in order to develop an even greater capacity to "overkill...
...nothing fundamental is likely to be changed by any amount of future nuclear testing...
...Bethe, the celebrated Cornell scientist, was the man chosen by President Kennedy to serve as chairman of the committee of experts charged with evaluating the significance of the Soviet tests...
...This is a problem for the public to ponder as well as our leaders in government," the FAS asserted recently...
...The Kennedy Administration must know that admission to the United Nations cannot be denied nations whose way of life we reject...
...See O. Edmund Clubb's "Trap in Vietnam" on Page 16 of this issue...
...Most, if not all, of the facts on which a judgment should be based are not secret and are intelligible to laymen as well as to scientific and military experts...
...We have no doubt that he brooded long and painfully over his decision to begin anew "these grim, unwelcome tests...
...We are pouring billions of dollars and sending thousands of American boys to prop up a government which is determined not to institute internal reforms, not to allow greater individual opportunity and justice with maximum freedom of choice...
...Bowles takes special satisfaction in "our reshaped foreign aid program," and well he might—but on paper, not in practice...
...It is the possession of this fantastic arsenal of nuclear firepower that led the U.S...
...What had happened between then and now to justify the President in reversing his judgment...
...The evidence is overwhelming that the corrupt and autocratic Ngo Dinh Diem regime has not even started on the basic reforms we made conditional for further aid last fall...
...The most populous—six hundred and fifty million people—and potentially the most powerful nation on earth is not represented and, of course, would not be bound by any agreement reached by the conference and ratified by the United Nations, of which it is not allowed to be a member...
...It has demonstrated a laudable willingness to engage in discussions with Kremlin spokesmen and has even taken the initiative on occasion to promote such talks...
...Defense Secretary Robert S. McNa-mara has told us that we now have a nuclear striking force of 1,700 intercontinental bombers, several dozen ICBMs ready for immediate delivery, about eighty Polaris missiles in nuclear-fueled submarines, about the same number of Thor and Jupiter rockets, about 300 nuclear-armed planes aboard giant carriers, and nearly 1,000 supersonic land-based fighter aircraft with nuclear weapons based in Britain and elsewhere in Europe...
...Thus, only recently...
...Nothing has been fundamentally changed by the Russian tests," he said, "except that it has become somewhat easier for them...
...In some respects, indeed, Mr...
...But by withholding 'recognition' from it, we simply help to make it a free agent in such important matters as arms control, while at the same time denying ourselves the opportunity to put diplomatic representatives behind China's Iron Curtain and thereby learn more about what is really happening in that gigantic chunk of Asia...
...Among the foreign policy "questions of a fundamental nature" raised by Bowles is this one: "Can we devise programs that will enable us to deal more effectively with Communist China with its vast population and dynamic potential...
...we recognize Soviet Russia and Fascist Spain...
...We have weapons of all sizes, for all reasonable military purposes...
...nuclear weapons stockpile and the capabilities of individual weapons and delivery systems are wholly adequate for the defense needs of the United States and the free world...
...Here, unhappily, as on so many occasions in the past, we are using our foreign aid program to support an unpopular regime committed to an intolerable status quo—all in the name of "fighting Communism...
...We already know so much about atomic weapons that there is very little to learn...
...This," according to P.M.S...
...Kennedy's utterances on foreign policy...
...Repeated proposals from the Soviet camp and from neutralist quarters for atom-tree zones in Central Europe, Africa, and Asia have been met with an almost ritualistic cry of "propaganda" from our State Department...
...We were led to believe at the time that Mr...
...Its primary emphasis is on economic aid instead of military aid . . ." Here, clearly, are the basic ingredients of a meaningful foreign aid program...
...Some of his speeches fairly glow with dedicated commitment to a more creative approach to world conflicts...
...Moreover, added Dr...
...It has done nothing we know about to move forward from the self-defeating position of its predecessors which bars diplomatic recognition of the Peiping regime and its accreditation to the United Nations as the government of China...
...Kennedy's deeds do not square with his words...
...But the deed, too often, does not match the word, and the President, more frequently than not, goes on playing out the old hands dealt him by his predecessor...
...But the very opposite of every one of them is being employed today in the area of our deepest involvement—South Vietnam...
...In another critical area of foreign policy-negotiation with the Soviets— the Kennedy Administration has seemed to us to be pursuing an ambivalent course...
...Our greatest disappointment over President Kennedy's conduct of foreign affairs came with his recent decision to resume nuclear testing in the atmosphere as a consequence of the Soviet Union's irresponsible and unprincipled resumption of tests last fall...
...Although his service on the President's staff has not been a wholly happy experience, Bowles is loyal to his chief and presents a balance sheet that seems to us rather more favorable than the facts warrant...
...It would be difficult to conceive a more effective way of playing squarely into the hands of the Communists...
...Louis Post-Dispatch and one of the ablest and most respected commentators in the nation's capital, gave us part of the story when he wrote: "In the prolonged controversy at the highest level of the Administration, Jerome B. Wiesner, President Kennedy's science adviser, has followed the basic line of [Dr...
...And our primary emphasis is military aid, not economic aid...
...Kennedy's decision would eschew "atomic blackmail designed to substitute terror for reason in the present international scene" but rather would be based solely on the scientific evaluation of Soviet tests by experts chosen for that task...
...There is much that is admirable in Mr...
...Atomic Energy Commission to conclude after the recent Soviet tests that the balance of nuclear power has not "been changed in favor of the Soviet Union...
...President Kennedy assured the nation after the criminal Soviet decision to resume testing that he was "entirely confident that the size of the U.S...
...Their Foreign Secretary, the Karl of Home, tailed for a temporary arrangement that would reconcile the Soviet Union's demand lor recognition ol East Germany with retention ol the West's rights in West Berlin, thus providing the basis for transforming mere discussion to genuine negotiation...
...Black-ett, Nobel Prize physicist and former military adviser to Winston Churchill's government, "amounts to 150 tons of TNT equivalent for every man, woman, and child in Russia...
...The only real security in the nuclear age," he said, "lies not in armament but in disarmament...
...It is this "strengthening of our military shield" that Bowles lists first among the Kennedy Administration's "accomplishments" in foreign policy—a rather curious choice for a man who has long warned us, with considerable eloquence, that our emphasis on armaments was dangerously narrow and negative in a world struggle that would be resolved on fronts that are social, economic, and ideological...
...Secretary of State Dean Rusk asserted that "in a situation like Berlin . . . the use of force is a strong element in our policy...
...The social and political repercussions are quite as important as, and perhaps even more important than, the technical and military factors...
...such a concept would destroy the principal usefulness of the organization as a safety-valve forum for discussion and debate for nations which do disagree...
...This situation, as the New York Times noted recently, "illustrates again how unrealistic it is for other governments to act on the assumption that the government of Communist China does not exist...
...Bethe, "the value of tests has been greatly exaggerated...
...The Kennedy Administration must know that recognition does not mean approval...
...But the Administration has been unwilling to lead the fight for national acceptance of a change of American policy—primarily, we suspect, because it doesn't relish the prospect of a head-on clash with the Know-Nothing forces of the far Right...
...Discussing the Soviet demand for recognition of its satellite, East Germany, Rusk acknowledged that "it's a fact that East Germany exists," but then proceeded to rule out any possibility of recognition as part of an overall settlement of the problems of Berlin and Germany...
...Here, as in other fields of foreign policy, Mr...
...We do not lor a moment condone the bitter, almost psychotic refusal of the Russians to agree to international inspection of a nuclear test ban, but neither can we support the President's decision to resume testing when our present arsenal is capable of destroying the world, especially since the very experts he chose to guide him see no overriding need for the tests...
...Kennedy's conduct of foreign affairs up to now...
...Dr...
...His announced willingness to cancel the new test series, scheduled for late April, if the Soviets in the interim sign an agreement for an internationally inspected and supervised ban on all nuclear weapons tests, revealed a measure of his deep concern over the course he had chosen...
...Kennedy did not rely on their conclusion that little or nothing of any substantial nature could be learned from a resumption of tests...
...What did these experts conclude...
...The American Federation of Scientists, whose ranks number some of the foremost nuclear scientists in the land, does not agree...
...During the same week, the British, who seem to have a far greater awareness of what is required for creative bargaining, proclaimed their willingess to meet the Russians hallway in a give-and-take settlement...
...There has been a widespread and insidious attempt to silence critics of the President's decision on the ground that ordinary mortals are not privy to the secret data necessary for intelligent judgment and cannot understand the technical complexities involved...
...While mildly conceding that "it is reasonable that we also should test," he was emphatic in concluding that he could see no great gains from such a course...
...Hans] Bethe—that further testing can add little or nothing of any substantial nature to the arsenals of either power...
...This failure of leadership is all the more striking just now as representatives of seventeen nations are assembled in Geneva groping for the means to end or control the arms race...
...The Bowles balance sheet did not, and perhaps could not, take into account the President's unwillingness to fight for far-sighted positions that might not be immediately acceptable to the more conventional forces in the country...
...chief Washington correspondent for the St...
...Kennedy has been more royalist than the crown, more military-minded than the five-star general who preceeded him in the White House...
...But far too often we, no less than the Russians, have clung to a sterile inflexibility that makes genuine negotiation impossible, and we, like them, have not hesitated to emphasize rocket-rattling as a major factor in our policy...
...The arms race has been intensified during his fifteen months in power, partly as a consequence of his demand for additional billions for the military establishment...
Vol. 26 • April 1962 • No. 4
