CHAPTER TENThe Soviet Menace
And still the awful truth remains: We can establish the domestic conditions for maximizing freedom, along the lines I have indicated, and yet become slaves. We can do this by losing the Cold War to the Soviet Union.
American freedom has always depended, to an extent, on what is happening beyond our shores. Even in Ben Franklin’s day, Americans had to reckon with foreign threats. Our forebearers knew that “keeping a Republic” meant, above all, keeping it safe from foreign transgressors; they knew that a people cannot live and work freely, and develop national institutions conducive to freedom, except in peace and with independence. In those early days the threat to peace and independence was very real. We were a fledgling-nation and the slightest misstep—or faint hearts—would have laid us open to the ravages of predatory European powers. It was only because wise and courageous men understood that defense of freedom required risks andsacrifice, as well as their belief in it, that we survived the crisis of national infancy. As we grew stronger, and as the oceans continued to interpose a physical barrier between ourselves and European militarism, the foreign danger gradually receded. Though we always had to keep a weather eye on would-be conquerors, our independence was acknowledged and peace, unless we chose otherwise, was established. Indeed, after the Second World War, we were not only master of our own destiny; we were master of the world. With a monopoly of atomic weapons, and with a conventional military establishment superior to any in the world, America was—in relative and absolute terms—the most powerful nation the world had ever known. American freedom was as secure as at any time in our history.
Now, a decade and half later, we have come full circle and our national existence is once again threatened as it was in the early days of the Republic. Though we are still strong physically, we are in clear and imminent danger of being overwhelmed by alien forces. We are confronted by a revolutionary world movement that possesses not only the will to dominate absolutely every square mile of the globe, but increasingly the capacity to do so: a military power that rivals our own, political warfare and propaganda skills that are superior to ours, an international fifth column that operates conspiratorially in the heart of our defenses, an ideology that imbues its adherents with a sense of historical mission; and all of these resourcescontrolled by a ruthless despotism that brooks no deviation from the revolutionary course. This threat, moreover, is growing day by day. And it has now reached the point where American leaders, both political and intellectual, are searching desperately for means of “appeasing” or “accommodating” the Soviet Union as the price of national survival. The American people are being told that, however valuable their freedom may be, it is even more important to live. A craven fear of death is entering the American consciousness; so much so that many recently felt that honoring the chief despot himself was the price we had to pay to avoid nuclear destruction.
The temptation is strong to blame the deterioration of America’s fortunes on the Soviet Union’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. But this is self-delusion. The rot had set in, the crumbling of our position was already observable, long before the Communists detonated their first Atom Bomb. Even in the early 1950s, when America still held unquestioned nuclear superiority, it was clear that we were losing the Cold War. Time and again in my campaign speeches of 1952 I warned my fellow Arizonans that “American Foreign Policy has brought us from a position of undisputed power, in seven short years, to the brink of possible disaster.” And in the succeeding seven years, that trend, because its cause remains, has continued.
The real cause of the deterioration can be simply stated. Our enemies have understood the nature of theconflict, and we have not. They are determined to win the conflict, and we are not.
I hesitate to restate the obvious—to say again what has been said so many times before by so many others: that the Communists’ aim is to conquer the world. I repeat it because it is the beginning and the end of our knowledge about the conflict between East and West. I repeat it because I fear that however often we have given lip-service to this central political fact of our time, very few of us havebelievedit. If we had, our entire approach to foreign policy over the past fourteen years would have been radically different, and the course of world events radically changed.
If an enemy power is bent on conquering you, and proposes to turn all of his resources to that end, he is at war with you; and you—unless you contemplate surrender—are at war with him. Moreover—unless you contemplate treason—your objective, like his, will be victory. Not “peace,” but victory. Now, while traitors (and perhaps cowards) have at times occupied key positions in our government, it is clear that our national leadership over the past fourteen years has favored neither surrender nor treason. It is equally clear, however, that our leaders have not madevictorythe goal of American policy. And the reason that they have not done so, I am saying, is that they have never believed deeply that the Communists are in earnest.
Our avowed national objective is “peace.” We have,with great sincerity, “waged” peace, while the Communists wage war. We have sought “settlements,” while the Communists seek victories. We have tried to pacify the world. The Communists mean to own it. Here is why the contest has been an unequal one, and why, essentially, we are losing it.
Peace, to be sure, is a proper goal for American policy—as long as it is understood that peace is not all we seek. For we do not want the peace of surrender. We want a peace in which freedom and justice will prevail, and that—given the nature of Communism—is a peace in which Soviet power will no longer be in a position to threaten us and the rest of the world. A tolerable peace, in other words, mustfollowvictory over Communism. We have been fourteen years trying to bury that unpleasant fact. It cannot be buried and any foreign policy that ignores it will lead to our extinction as a nation.
We do not, of course, want to achieve victory by force of arms. If possible, overt hostilities should always be avoided; especially is this so when a shooting war may cause the death of many millions of people, including our own. But we cannot, for that reason, make the avoidance of a shooting war our chief objective. If we do that—if we tell ourselves that it is more important to avoid shooting than to keep our freedom—we are committed to a course that has only one terminal point: surrender. We cannot, by proclamation, make war “unthinkable.” For it is not unthinkable tothe Communists: naturally, they would prefer to avoid war, but they are prepared to risk it, in the last analysis, to achieve their objectives. We must, in our hearts, be equally dedicated to our objectives. If war is unthinkable to us but not to them, the famous “balance of terror” is not a balance at all, but an instrument of blackmail. U. S.-Soviet power may be in balance; but if we, and not they, rule out the possibility of using that power, the Kremlin can create crisis after crisis, and force the U. S., because of our greater fear of war, to back down every time. And it cannot be long before a universal Communist Empire sits astride the globe.
The rallying cry of an appeasement organization, portrayed in a recent novel on American politics, was “I would rather crawl on my knees to Moscow than die under an Atom bomb.” This sentiment, of course, repudiates everything that is courageous and honorable and dignified in the human being. We must—as the first step toward saving American freedom—affirm the contrary view and make it the cornerstone of our foreign policy: that we would rather die than lose our freedom. There are ways which I will suggest later on—not easy ways, to be sure—in which we may save both our freedomandour lives; but all such suggestions are meaningless and vain unless we first understand what the objective is. We want to stay alive, of course; but more than that we want to be free. We want to have peace; but before that we want to establish the conditions that will make peace tolerable.“Like it or not,” Eugene Lyons has written, “the great and inescapable task of our epoch is not to end the Cold War but to win it.”
I suggest that we look at America’s present foreign policy, and ask whether it is conducive to victory. There are several aspects of this policy. Let us measure each of them by the test: Does it help defeat the enemy?
Through NATO, SEATO and the Central Treaty Organization in mid-Asia, we have served notice on the Kremlin that overt Communist aggression in certain areas of the world will be opposed by American arms. It is likely that the existence of these alliances has helped discourage military adventurism by the Communists.
Still, we should not overestimate the value of the alliances. Though they play a significant role in safeguarding American freedom, there are a number of reasons why it is a limited role.
First, the alliance system is not co-extensive with the line that must be held if enemy expansion is to be prevented. There are huge areas of the non-Communist world that the alliances do not touch. Nor—even assuming America is strong enough to guard a world-wide defense perimeter—is there any prospect of bringing these areas into the system. The so-called neutral countries of the Middle East, Africa and SouthernAsia have refused to align themselves with the anti-Communist cause, and it is in those areas, as we might expect, that the Communists are making significant strides. This is a critical weakness. If all of those areas should fall under Communist rule, the alliances would be outflanked everywhere: the system would be reduced to a series of outposts, and probably indefensible ones at that, in a wholly hostile world.
Secondly, the alliance system does not protect even its members against the most prevalent kind of Communist aggression: political penetration and internal subversion. Iraq is a case in point. We had pledged ourselves to support the Iraqi against overt Soviet aggression—not only under the Baghdad Pact of which Iraq was the cornerstone, but also under the Eisenhower Doctrine. Iraq fell victim to a pro-Communist coup without an American or Russian shot being fired. Cuba is another example. If the Red Army had landed in Havana, we would have come to Cuba’s aid. Castro’s forces, however, were native Cubans; as a result, a pro-Communist regime has become entrenched on our very doorstep through the technique of internal subversion. And so it will always be with an enemy that lays even more emphasis on political warfare than on military warfare. So it will be until we learn to meet the enemy on his own grounds.
But thirdly, the alliance system cannot adequately protect its members even againstovertaggression. Inthe past, the Communists have been kept in check by America’s strategic air arm. Indeed, in the light of the weakness of the allied nations’ conventional military forces, our nuclear superiority has been the alliances’ only real weapon. But as the Soviet Union draws abreast of us in nuclear strength, that weakness could prove our undoing. In a nuclear stalemate, where neither side is prepared to go “all out” over local issues, the side with the superior conventional forces has an obvious advantage. Moreover, it is clear that we cannot hope to match the Communist world man for man, nor are we capable of furnishing the guns and tanks necessary to defend thirty nations scattered over the face of the globe. The long-overdue answer, as we will see later on, lies in the development of a nuclear capacity for limited wars.
Finally—and I consider this the most serious defect of all—the alliance system is completely defensive in nature and outlook. This fact, in the light of the Communists’ dynamic, offensive strategy, ultimately dooms it to failure. No nation at war, employing an exclusively defensive strategy, can hope to survive for long. Like the boxer who refuses to throw a punch, the defense-bound nation will be cut down sooner or later. As long as every encounter with the enemy is fought on his initiative, on grounds of his choosing and with weapons of his choosing, we shall keep on losing the Cold War.
Another aspect of our policy is the Foreign Aid program. To it, in the last fourteen years, we have committed over eighty billions of American treasure—in grants, loans, material, and technical assistance. I will not develop here what every thinking American knows about this Gargantuan expenditure—that it has had dire consequences, not only for the American taxpayer, but for the American economy; that it has been characterized by waste and extravagance both overseas and in the agencies that administer it; and that it has created a vast reservoir of anti-Americanism among proud peoples who, however irrationally, resent dependence on a foreign dole. I would rather put the question, Has the Foreign Aid program, for all of its drawbacks, made a compensating contribution toward winning the Cold War?
And this test, let me say parenthetically, is the only one under which the Foreign Aid program can be justified. It cannot, that is to say, be defended as a charity. The American government does not have the right, much less the obligation, to try to promote the economic and social welfare of foreign peoples. Of course, all of us are interested in combating poverty and disease wherever it exists.But the Constitution does not empower our government to undertake that job in foreign countries, no matter how worthwhile it might be. Therefore, except as it can be shown to promote America’s national interests, the Foreign Aid program is unconstitutional.
It can be argued, but not proved, that American aid helped prevent Western Europe from going Communist after the Second World War. It is true, for example, that the Communist parties in France and Italy were somewhat weaker after economic recovery than before it. But it does not follow that recoverycausedthe reduction in Communist strength, or that American aid caused the recovery. It is also true, let us remember, that West Germany recovered economically at a far faster rate than France or Italy, and received comparatively little American aid.
It also can be argued that American military aid has made the difference between friendly countries having the power to fight off or discourage Communist aggression, and not having that power. Here, however, we must distinguish between friendly countries that werenotable to build their own military forces, and those that were. Greece, Turkey, Free China, South Korea and South Vietnam needed our help. Other countries, England and France, for example, were able to maintain military forces with their own resources. For many years now, our allies in Western Europe have devoted smaller portions of their national budgets to military forces than we have. The result is that the American people, in the name ofmilitaryaid, have been giving aneconomichandout to these nations; we have permitted them to transfer to their domestic economy funds which, in justice, should have been used in the common defense effort.
Now let us note a significant fact. In each of the situations we have mentioned so far—situations where some evidence exists that Foreign Aid has promoted American interests—there is a common denominator:in every case, the recipient government was already committed to our side. Wemayhave made these nations, on balance, stronger and more constant allies, though even that is debatable. But we did not cause them to alter their basic political commitments. This brings us to the rest of the Foreign Aid program—and to the great fallacy that underlies it.
Increasingly, our foreign aid goes not to our friends, but to professed neutrals—and even to professed enemies. We furnish this aid under the theory that we can buy the allegiance of foreign peoples—or at least discourage them from “going Communist”—by making them economically prosperous. This has been called the “stomach theory of Communism,” and it implies that a man’s politics are determined by the amount of food in his belly.
Everything we have learned from experience, and from our observation of the nature of man, refutes this theory. A man’s politics are, primarily, the product of his mind. Material wealth can help him further his political goals, but it will not change them. The fact that some poor, illiterate people have “gone Communist” does not prove that poverty caused them to do so any more than the fact that Alfred K. and Martha D. Stern are Communists proves that great wealthand a good education make people go Communist. Let us remember that Communism is a political movement, and that its weapons are primarily political. The movement’s effectiveness depends on small cadres of political activists, and these cadres are, typically, composed of literate and well-fed people. We are not going to change the minds of such political activists, or impede their agitation of the masses by a “war on poverty,” however worthy such an effort might be on humanitarian grounds.
It thus makes little sense to try to promote anti-Communism by giving money to governments that are not anti-Communist, that are, indeed, far more inclined to the Soviet-type society than to a free one. And let us remember that the foreign policies of many of the allegedly neutral nations that receive our aid are not “neutral” at all. Is Sukarno’s Indonesia neutral when it encourages Red Chinese aggression? Or Nehru’s India when it censures the Western effort to recover Suez but refuses to censure the Soviet invasion of Hungary? Or Nasser’s United Arab Republic which equips its armed forces with Communist weapons and Communist personnel? Is American aid likely to make these nations less pro-Communist? Has it?
But let us, for the moment, concede the validity of the “stomach theory,” and ask a further question: Is our foreign aid program the kind that will bring prosperity to underdeveloped countries? We Americans believe—and we can cite one hundred and fifty yearsof experience to support the belief—that the way to build a strong economy is to encourage the free play of economic forces: free capital, free labor, a free market. Yet every one of the “neutral” countries we are aiding is committed to a system of State Socialism. Our present policy of government-to-government aid strengthens Socialism in those countries. We are not only perpetuating the inefficiency and waste that always attends government-controlled economies; by strengthening the hand of those governments, we are making it more difficult for free enterprise to take hold. For this reason alone, we should eliminate all government-to-government capital assistance and encourage the substitution of American private investment.
Our present Foreign Aid program, in sum, is not only ill-administered, but ill-conceived. It has not, in the majority of cases, made the free world stronger; it has made America weaker; and it has created in minds the world over an image of a nation that puts prime reliance, not on spiritual and human values, but on the material things that are the stock-in-trade of Communist propaganda. To this extent we have adopted Communist doctrine.
In the future, if our methods are to be in tune with our true objectives, we will confine foreign aid to military and technical assistance to those nations that need it and that are committed to a common goal of defeating world Communism.
As I write, the world is waiting for another round of diplomatic conferences between East and West. A full scale summit meeting is scheduled for Spring; later on, President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev will have further talks in the Soviet Union. And we are told that this is only the beginning of a long-range American policy to try to settle world problems by “negotiation.”
As the preparations for the Spring meetings go forward, I am struck by a singular fact: no one on our side claims—let alone believes—that the West will be stronger after these new negotiations than it is today. The same was true last Summer. We agreed to “negotiate” about Berlin—not because we hoped to gain anything by such talks—but because the Communists had created a “crisis,” and we could think of nothing better to do about it than go to the conference table. After all, we assured ourselves, there is no harm in talking.
I maintain thereisharm in talking under present conditions. There are several reasons why this is so. First of all, Communists do not look upon negotiations, as we do, as an effort to reach an agreement. For them, negotiations are simply aninstrumentof political warfare. For them, a summit meeting is another battle in the struggle for the world. A diplomatic conference, in Communist language, is a “propagandaforum from which to speak to the masses over the heads of their leaders.”
Of course, if the Communists can obtain a formal agreement beneficial to them, so much the better. But if not the negotiations themselves will provide victory enough. For example, when the Soviets challenged our rights in West Berlin, we handed them a victory by the mere act of sitting down at the conference table. By agreeing to negotiate on that subject, we agreed that our rights in Berlin were “negotiable”—something they never were before. Thus we acknowledged, in effect, the inadequacy of our position, and the world now expects us to adjust it as proof of our good faith. Our answer to Khrushchev’s ultimatum should have been that the status of West Berlin concerns only West Berliners and the occupying powers, and is therefore not a matter that we are prepared to discuss with the Soviet Union. That would have been the end of the Berlin “crisis.”
The Berlin situation illustrates another reason why the West is at an inherent disadvantage in negotiating with the Communists. The central strategic fact of the Cold War, as it is presently fought, is that the Communists are on the offensive and we are on the defensive. The Soviet Union is always moving ahead, always trying to get something from the free world; the West endeavors, at best, to hold what it has. Therefore, the focal point of negotiations is invariably somewhere in the non-Communist world. Every conferencebetween East and West deals with some territory or right belonging to the free world which the Communists covet. Conversely, since the free world does not seek the liberation of Communist territory, the possibility of Communist concessions never arises. Once the West did attempt to use the conference table for positive gain. At Geneva, in 1955, President Eisenhower told the Soviets he wanted to discuss the status of the satellite nations of Eastern Europe. He was promptly advised that the Soviet Union did not consider the matter a legitimate subject for negotiation, and that was that. Now since we are not permitted to talk about whatwecan get, the only interesting question at an East-West conference is what the Communists can get. Under such conditions, we can never win. At best we can hope for a stalemate that will place us exactly where we started.
There is still another reason for questioning the value of negotiations. Assume that somehow we achieve an agreement we think advances our interests. Is there any reason for supposing the Communists will keep it one moment longer than suits their purpose? We, and they, are different in this respect. We keep our word. The long and perfidious Communist record of breaking agreements and treaties proves that the Soviet Union will not keep any agreement that is not to its advantage to keep. It follows that the only agreement worth making with the Soviets is one that will be self-enforceable—which means one that is in the Kremlin’s interest to keep. But if that is thecase, why bother to “negotiate” about it? If an action is in the interest of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin will go ahead and perform it without feeling any need to make it the subject of a formal treaty.
The next time we are urged to rush to the conference table in order to “relax world tensions,” let our reaction be determined by this simple fact: the only “tensions” that exist between East and West have been created, and deliberately so, by the Communists. They can therefore be “relaxed” by the Kremlin’s unilateral act. The moment we decide to relax tensions by a “negotiated compromise” we have decided to yield something of value to the West.
In recent months, the so-called exchange program has become an increasingly prominent feature of American foreign policy. The program began modestly enough in 1955 at the Geneva Summit Meeting, when we agreed with the Soviets to promote “cultural exchanges” between the two countries. Since then we have exchanged everything from opera companies and basketball teams to trade exhibitions and heads of governments. We are told that these exchanges are our best hope of peace—that if only the American and Russian peoples can learn to “understand” each other, they will be able to reconcile their differences.
The claim that the conflict between the Soviets and ourselves stems from a “lack of understanding” is oneof the great political fables of our time.Whoselack of understanding?
Are the American people ill-informed as to the nature of Communism and of the Soviet state? True, some Americans fail to grasp how evil the Soviet system really is. But a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet, or a tour of the United States by Nikita Khrushchev, is certainly not calculated to correctthatdeficiency.
What of the Soviet leaders? Aretheymisled? All of the evidence is that the men in the Kremlin have a greater knowledge of America than many of our own leaders. They know about our political system, our industrial capacity, our way of life—and would like to destroy it all.
What about the Russian people? We are repeatedly told that the Russian man-on-the-street is woefully ignorant of the American way, and that our trade exhibition in Moscow, for example, contributed vastly to his knowledge and thus to his appreciation of America. Assume this is true. Is it relevant? As long as the Russian people do not control their government, it makes little difference whether they think well of us or ill. It is high time that our leaders stopped treating the Russian people and the Soviet government as one and the same thing. The Russian people, we may safely assume, are basically on our side (whether or not they have the opportunity to listen to American musicians); but their sympathy will not help us win theCold War as long as all power is held firmly in the hands of the Communist ruling class.
The exchange program, in Soviet eyes, is simply another operation in Communist political warfare. The people the Kremlin sends over here are, to a man, trained agents of Soviet policy. Some of them are spies, seeking information; all of them are trusted carriers of Communist propaganda. Their mission is not cultural, but political. Their aim is not to inform, but to mislead. Their assignment is not to convey a true image of the Soviet Union, but a false image. The Kremlin’s hope is that they will persuade the American people to forget the ugly aspects of Soviet life, and the danger that the Soviet system poses to American freedom.
It is a mistake to measure the success of this Communist operation by the extent to which it converts Americans to Communism. By that test, of course, the operation is almost a complete failure. But the Kremlin’s aim is not to make Americansapproveof Communism, much as they would like that; it is to make ustolerantof Communism. The Kremlin knows that our willingness to make sacrifices to halt Communist expansion varies in direct ratio as we arehostileto Communism. They know that if Americans regard the Soviet Union as a dangerous, implacable enemy, Communism will not be able to conquer the world. The Communists’ purpose, then, is to show that Khrushchev does not have horns,—that he is fundamentally a nicefellow; that the Soviet people are—“ordinary people” just like ourselves; that Communism is just another political system.
It would not have made sense, midway in the Second World War, to promote a Nazi-American exchange program or to invite Hitler to make a state visit to the United States. Unless we cherish victory less today than we did then, we will be equally reluctant to treat Communist agents as friends and welcome guests. The exchange program is a Communist confidence game. Let us not be taken in by it. Let us remember that American confidence in the Soviet government is the very last thing we want.
Many people contend that a “normalization” of Soviet-American relations, as envisaged by the exchange program, is only a logical extension of granting diplomatic recognition to Communist governments. I agree. Accordingly, I think it would be wise for the United States to re-examine the question of its diplomatic relations with Communist regimes. We often hear that recognition permits us to gather information in Communist countries. I am unaware, however, of any advantage that our diplomatic mission in Moscow confers along these lines that does not doubly accrue to the Soviet Union from its diplomatic spy corps in Washington and other American cities. Espionage possibilities aside, I am quite certain that our entire approach to the Cold War would change for the better the moment we announced that the UnitedStates does not regard Mr. Khrushchev’s murderous claque as the legitimate rulers of the Russian people or of any other people. Not only would withdrawal of recognition stiffen the American people’s attitude toward Communism; it would also give heart to the enslaved peoples and help them to overthrow their captors. Our present policy of not recognizing Red China is eminently right, and the reasons behind that policy apply equally to the Soviet Union and its European satellites. If our objective is to win the Cold War, we will start now by denying our moral support to the very regimes we mean to defeat.
For many years, our policy-makers have paid lip-service to the idea of disarmament. This seems to be one of the ways, in modern diplomacy, of proving your virtue. Recently, however—under strong Communist propaganda pressure—we have acted as though we mean this talk to be taken seriously. I cite our government’s momentous decision to suspend nuclear tests.
Students of history have always recognized that armament races are a symptom of international friction—not a cause of it. Peace has never been achieved, and it will not in our time, by rival nations suddenly deciding to turn their swords into plowshares. No nation in its right mind will give up the means of defending itself without first making sure that hostile powers are no longer in a position to threaten it.
The Communist leaders are, of course, in their right minds. They would not dream of adopting a policy that would leave them, on balance, relatively weaker than before they adopted such a policy. They might preach general disarmament for propaganda purposes. They also might seriously promote mutual disarmament in certain weapons in the knowledge that their superior strength in other weapons would leave them, on balance, decisively stronger than the West. Thus, in the light of the West’s weakness in conventional weapons, it might make sense for the Communists to seek disarmament in the nuclear field; if all nuclear weapons suddenly ceased to exist, much of the world would immediately be laid open to conquest by the masses of Russian and Chinese manpower.
American leaders have not shown a comparable solicitude for our security needs. After the Second World War, the United States had a conventional military establishment rivaling the Soviet Union’s, and an absolute monopoly in nuclear power. The former weapon we hastily and irresponsibly dismantled. The latter we failed to exploit politically, and then we proceeded to fritter away our lead by belated entry into the hydrogen bomb and guided missile fields. The result is that we are out-classed in the conventional means for waging land warfare; regarding nuclear weapons, we are approaching the point, if it has not already been reached, where Communist power is equal to our own.
To the impending physical parity in nuclear weapons must be added a psychological factor assiduously cultivated by Communist propaganda. The horrors of all-out warfare are said to be so great that no nation would consider resorting to nuclear weapons unless under direct attack by those same weapons. Now the moment our leaders really accept this, strategic nuclear weapons will be neutralized and Communist armies will be able to launch limited wars without fear of retaliation by our Strategic Air Command. I fear they are coming to accept it, and thus that a military and psychological situation is fast developing in which aggressive Communist forces will be free to maneuver under the umbrella of nuclear terror.
It is in this context that we must view the Communist propaganda drive for a permanent ban on the testing of nuclear weapons, and the inclination of our own leaders to go along with the proposal. There are two preliminary reasons why such proposals ought to be firmly rejected. First, there is no reliable means of preventing the Communists from secretly breaking such an agreement. Our most recent tests demonstrated that underground atomic explosions can be set off without detection. Secondly, we cannot hope to maintain even an effectivestrategicdeterrent unless we keep our present nuclear arsenal up to date; this requires testing. But the main point I want to make is that tests are needed to developtacticalnuclear weapons for possible use in limited wars. Our military experts have long recognized that for limited warfarepurposes we must have a weapons superiority to offset the Communists’ manpower superiority. This means we must develop and perfect a variety of small, clean nuclear weapons; and this in turn means: testing. The development of such a weapons system is the only way in which America will be able to fight itself out of the dilemma—one horn of which is superior Communist manpower, the other, the impending neutralization of strategic nuclear weapons.
Our government was originally pushed into suspending tests by Communist-induced hysteria on the subject of radio-active fallout. However one may rate that danger, it simply has no bearing on the problem at hand. The facts are that there is practically no fallout from tests conducted above the earth’s atmosphere, and none at all from underground tests. Therefore, the only excuse for suspending tests is that our forbearance somehow contributes to peace. And my answer is that I am unable to see how peace is brought any nearer by a policy that may reduce our relative military strength. Such a policy makes sense only under the assumption that Communist leaders have given up their plan for world revolution and will settle for peaceful coexistence—an assumption we make at the risk of losing our national life.
If our objective is victory over Communism, we must achieve superiority in all of the weapons—military, as well as political and economic—that may be useful in reaching that goal. Such a program costsmoney, but so long as the money is spent wisely and efficiently, I would spend it. I am not in favor of “economizing” on the nation’s safety. As a Conservative, I deplore the huge tax levy that is needed to finance the world’s number-one military establishment. But even more do I deplore the prospect of a foreign conquest, which the absence of that establishment would quickly accomplish.
Support of the United Nations, our leaders earnestly proclaim, is one of the cornerstones of American foreign policy. I confess to being more interested in whether American foreign policy has the support of the United Nations.
Here, again, it seems to me that our approach to foreign affairs suffers from a confusion in objectives. Is the perpetuation of an international debating forum, for its own sake, the primary objective of American policy? If so, there is much to be said for our past record of subordinating our national interest to that of the United Nations. If, on the other hand, our primary objective is victory over Communism, we will, as a matter of course, view such organizations as the UN as a possiblemeansto that end. Once the question is asked—Does America’s participation in the United Nations help or hinder her struggle against world Communism?—it becomes clear that our present commitment to the UN deserves re-examination.
The United Nations, we must remember, is in parta Communist organization. The Communists always have at least one seat in its major policy-making body, the Security Council; and the Soviet Union’s permanent veto power in that body allows the Kremlin to block any action, on a substantial issue, that is contrary to its interests. The Communists also have a sizeable membership in the UN’s other policy-making body, the General Assembly. Moreover, the UN’s working staff, the Secretariat, is manned by hundreds of Communist agents who are frequently in a position to sabotage those few UN policies thatarecontrary to Communist interests. Finally, a great number of non-Communist United Nations are sympathetic to Soviet aims—or, at best, are unsympathetic to ours.
We therefore should not be surprised that many of the policies that emerge from the deliberations of the United Nations are not policies that are in the best interest of the United States. United Nations policy is, necessarily, the product of many different views—some of them friendly, some of them indifferent to our interests, some of them mortally hostile. And the result is that our national interests usually suffer when we subordinate our own policy to the UN’s. In nearly every case in which we have called upon the United Nations to do our thinking for us, and to make our policy for us—whether during the Korean War, or in the Suez crisis, or following the revolution in Iraq—we have been a less effective foe of Communism than we otherwise might have been.
Unlike America, the Communists do not respect the UN and do not permit their policies to be affected by it. If the “opinion of mankind,” as reflected by a UN resolution, goes against them, they—in effect—tell mankind to go fly a kite. Not so with us; we would rather be approved than succeed, and so are likely to adjust our own views to conform with a United Nations majority. This is not the way to win the Cold War. I repeat: Communism will not be beaten by a policy that is the common denominator of the foreign policies of 80-odd nations, some of which are our enemies, nearly all of which are less determined than we to save the world from Communist domination. Let us, then, have done with submitting major policy decisions to a forum where the opinions of the Sultan of Yeman count equally with ours; where the vote of the United States can be cancelled out by the likes of “Byelorussia.”
I am troubled by several other aspects of our UN commitment. First—and here again our Cold War interests are damaged—the United Nations provides a unique forum for Communist propaganda. We too, of course, can voice our views at the UN; but the Communists’ special advantage is that their lies and misrepresentations are elevated to the level of serious international debate. By recognizing the right of Communist regimes to participate in the UN as equals, and by officially acknowledging them as “peace-loving,” we grant Communist propaganda a presumption of reasonableness and plausibility it otherwise would not have.
Second, the UN places an unwarranted financial burden on the American taxpayer. The Marxist formula, “from each according to his ability ...”—under which contributions to the UN and its specialized agencies are determined—does not tally with the American concept of justice. The United States is currently defraying roughly a third of all United Nations expenses. That assessment should be drastically reduced. The UN should not operate as a charity. Assessments should take into account the benefits received by the contributor-nation.
Finally, I fear that our involvement in the United Nations may be leading to an unconstitutional surrender of American sovereignty. Many UN activities have already made strong inroads against the sovereign powers of Member Nations. This is neither the time nor place to discuss the merits of yielding sovereign American rights—other than to record my unequivocal opposition to the idea. It is both the time and place, however, to insist that any such discussion take place within the framework of a proposed constitutional amendment—and not, clandestinely, in the headquarters of some UN agency.
Withdrawal from the United Nations is probably not the answer to these problems. For a number of reasons that course is unfeasible. We should make sure, however, that the nature of our commitment is such as to advance American interests; and that will involve changes in some of our present attitudes andpolicies toward the UN. Let the UN firsters—of whom there are many in this country—put their enthusiasm for “international cooperation” in proper perspective. Let them understand that victory over Communism must comebeforethe achievement of lasting peace. Let them, in a word, keep their eyes on the target.
There is one aspect of our policy thatisoffensive-minded—in the minds of its authors, anyway. Its effect, unfortunately, is exactly opposite to the one intended.
Some time ago our leaders advanced the theory that Communist satellite regimes would, with our help, gradually break their ties with the Soviet Union and “evolve” political systems more in keeping with our notions of freedom and justice. Accordingly, America adopted the policy of giving aid to Communist governments whose relations with Moscow seemed to be strained. And that policy gave birth to a slogan: “America seeks the liberation of enslaved peoples—not by revolution—but through evolution.” Under the aegis of this slogan, we are sending hundreds of millions of dollars to the Communist government of Poland, having already given more than a billion dollars to the Communist government of Yugoslavia.
In my view, this money has not only been wasted; it has positively promoted the Communist cause. It hasnotmade Communist governments less Communist. Ithasnotcaused Communist governments to change sides in the Cold War. Ithasmade it easier for Communist governments to keep their subjects enslaved. And none of these results should have come as a surprise.
One does not have to take the view that a Communist regime will never “evolve” into a non-Communist one (though I tend to it) in order to see that this is practically impossible as long as the Soviet Union possesses the military and political power to prevent it. The Kremlin may, for its own purposes, permit certain “liberalization” tendencies in satellite countries; it may even permit small deviations from the approved Soviet foreign policy line. It will do so sometimes to confuse the West, sometimes as a prudent means of relieving internal pressures. But it will never let things go too far. Hungary proved that. The moment a Communist government threatens to become a non-Communist one, or threatens to align itself with the West against the Soviet Union, the Kremlin will take steps to bring the defecting government into line.
Hungary proved this truth, and Poland has proved that dissident Communists learned it. Western leaders, unfortunately, were much less perceptive. In the Fall of 1956, there appeared to be a breach between Gomulka’s government and the Kremlin. Many Westerners joyfully proclaimed that Poland was pulling away from Communism, and hoping to hasten this movement, our government began to send the Gomulkaregime American aid. The succeeding years witnessed two facts: 1. Our money made it easier for Gomulka’s regime to deal with its economic problems; 2. Gomulka moved into an even closer relationship with the Soviet government. Gomulka knew, as American policy-makers ought to have known, that the price of abandoning Communism is a Budapest-type blood bath. This, of course, need not be the case were America prepared to come to the aid of people who want to strike out for freedom. But as long as we give Soviet military forces a free hand in Eastern Europe, it is the height of folly to try to bribe Communist governments into becoming our friends.
We must realize that the captivepeoplesare our friends and potential allies—not their rulers. A truly offensive-minded strategy would recognize that the captive peoples are our strongest weapon in the war against Communism, and would encourage them to overthrow their captors. A policy of strengthening their captors can only postpone that upheaval within the Communist Empire that is our best hope of defeating Communism without resorting to nuclear war.
By measuring each aspect of our foreign policy against the standard—Is it helpful in defeating the enemy?—we can understand why the past fourteen years have been marked by frustration and failure. We have not gotten ahead because we have been travelling the wrong road.
It is less easy to stake out the right road. For in terms of our own experience it is a new road we seek, and one therefore that will hold challenges and perils that are different (though hardly graver) from those with which we are now familiar. Actually, the “new” road is as old as human history: it is the one that successful political and military leaders, having arrived at a dispassionate “estimate of the situation,” always follow when they are in a war they mean to win. From our own estimate of the situation, we know thedirectionwe must take; and our standard—Is it helpful in defeating Communism?—will provide guideposts all along the way. There are some that can be observed even now:
1. The key guidepost is the Objective, and we must never lose sight of it. It is not to wage a struggle against Communism, but to win it.
2. Our strategy must be primarily offensive in nature. Given the dynamic, revolutionary character of the enemy’s challenge, we cannot win merely by trying to hold our own. In addition toparryinghis blows, we must strike our own. In addition to guarding our frontiers, we must try to puncture his. In addition to keeping the free world free, we must try to make the Communist world free. To these ends, we must always try to engage the enemy at times and places, and with weapons, of our own choosing.
3. We must strive to achieve and maintain military superiority. Mere parity will not do. Since we can never match the Communists in manpower, our equipment and weapons must more than offset his advantage in numbers. We must also develop a limited war capacity. For this latter purpose, we should make every effort to achieve decisive superiority in small, clean nuclear weapons.
4. We must make America economically strong. We have already seen why economic energy must be released from government strangulation if individual freedom is to survive. Economic emancipation is equally imperative if the nation is to survive. America’s maximum economic power will be forged, not under bureaucratic direction, but in freedom.
5. In all of our dealings with foreign nations, we must behave like a great power. Our national posture must reflect strength and confidence and purpose, as well as good will. We need not be bellicose, but neither should we encourage others to believe that American rights can be violated with impunity. We must protect American nationals and American property and American honor—everywhere. We may not make foreign peoples love us—no nation has ever succeeded in that—but we can makethem respect us. Andrespectis the stuff of which enduring friendships and firm alliances are made.
6. We should adopt a discriminating foreign aid policy.American aid should be furnished only to friendly, anti-Communist nations that are willing to join with us in the struggle for freedom. Moreover, our aid should take the form of loans or technical assistance, not gifts. And we should insist, moreover, that such nations contribute their fair share to the common cause.
7. We should declare the world Communist movement an outlaw in the community of civilized nations. Accordingly, we should withdraw diplomatic recognition from all Communist governments including that of the Soviet Union, thereby serving notice on the world that we regard such governments as neither legitimate nor permanent.
8. We should encourage the captive peoples to revolt against their Communist rulers. This policy must be pursued with caution and prudence, as well as courage. For while our enslaved friends must be told we are anxious to help them, we should discourage premature uprisings that have no chance of success. The freedom fighters must understand that the time and place and method of such uprisings will be dictated by the needs of an overall world strategy. To this end we should establish close liaison with underground leaders behind the Iron Curtain, furnishing them with printing presses, radios, weapons, instructors: the paraphernalia of a full-fledged Resistance.
9. We should encourage friendly peoples that havethe means and desire to do so to undertake offensive operations for the recovery of their homelands. For example, should a revolt occur inside Red China, we should encourage and support guerrilla operations on the mainland by the Free Chinese. Should the situation develop favorably, we should encourage the South Koreans and the South Vietnamese to join Free Chinese forces in a combined effort to liberate the enslaved peoples of Asia.
10. We must—ourselves—be prepared to undertake military operations against vulnerable Communist regimes. Assume we have developed nuclear weapons that can be used in land warfare, and that we have equipped our European divisions accordingly. Assume also a major uprising in Eastern Europe, such as occurred in Budapest in 1956. In such a situation, we ought to present the Kremlin with an ultimatum forbidding Soviet intervention, and be prepared, if the ultimatum is rejected, to move a highly mobile task force equipped with appropriate nuclear weapons to the scene of the revolt. Our objective would be to confront the Soviet Union with superior force in the immediate vicinity of the uprising and to compel a Soviet withdrawal. An actual clash between American and Soviet armies would be unlikely; the mere threat of American action, coupled with the Kremlin’s knowledge that the fighting would occur amid a hostile population and could easily spread to other areas, would probably result in Soviet acceptance of the ultimatum. The Kremlin would also be put on notice, ofcourse, that resort to long-range bombers and missiles would prompt automatic retaliation in kind. On this level, we would invite the Communist leaders to choose between total destruction of the Soviet Union, and accepting a local defeat.... Had we the will and the means for it in 1956, such a policy would have saved the Hungarian Revolution.
This is hard counsel. But it is hard, I think, not for what it says, but for saying it openly. Such a policy involves the risk of war? Of course; but any policy, short of surrender, does that. Any policy that successfully frustrates the Communists’ aim of world domination runs the risk that the Kremlin will choose to lose in a kamikaze-finish. It is hard counsel because it frankly acknowledges that war may be the price of freedom, and thus intrudes on our national complacency. But is it really so hard when it goes on to search for the most likely means of safeguarding both our livesandour freedom? Is it so hard when we think of the risks that were taken to create our country?—risks on which our ancestors openly and proudly staked their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.” Will we do less tosaveour country?
The risks I speak of are risks on our terms, instead of on Communist terms.We, not they, would select the time and place for a test of wills.We, not they, would have the opportunity to bring maximum strength to bear on that test.They, not we, would have to decide between fighting for limited objectives under unfavorablecircumstances, or backing down. And these are immense advantages.
The future, as I see it, will unfold along one of two paths. Either the Communists will retain the offensive; will lay down one challenge after another; will invite us in local crisis after local crisis to choose between all-out war and limited retreat; and will force us, ultimately, to surrender or accept war under the most disadvantageous circumstances. Orwewill summon the will and the means for taking the initiative, and wage a war of attrition against them—and hope, thereby, to bring about the internal disintegration of the Communist empire. One course runs the risk of war, and leads, in any case, to probable defeat. The other runs the risk of war, and holds forth the promise of victory. For Americans who cherish their lives, but their freedom more, the choice cannot be difficult.