In the grim years of cold war, a truly effective U.S. foreign policy is the work of decades. It is the sum total of crises met, of potential dangers recognized and countered, of national hopes and aspirations projected in hundreds of big and little policies. Success is measured in the sharpening ability to counter the probing actions before they become big offensives, in the growing frustration and confusion of the enemy, in the degree of popular will-to-win at home. Ultimate policy goal: to wrap up the political, economic, military and moral meanings of the U.S. into the sort of grand plan that the cause—human freedom—deserves and the objective —an orderly, peaceful world of prospering, responsible nations—demands.
In such long-range terms, 1958 could be reckoned a year of limited success. Still shocked at year’s beginning by Sputnik, the U.S. strengthened its steady recognition that crisis is the cold-war staple that must be lived with and lived up to. The 1958 record looked even better because of Communism’s failure to keep up its Sputnik momentum. And while the U.S. failed to define the grand plan—despite the stabs made by President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, Secretary of State Dulles, Dean Acheson, Adlai Stevenson, et al.—this failure was mitigated by the fact that, as the year closed, leaders of both parties were finally convinced that the definition was urgently necessary.
Specifically in 1958 the U.S.:
¶ Determinedly and rapidly deployed military-diplomatic power across thousands of miles from Lebanon to Quemoy to Berlin (see map), deterred big war and two limited wars, kept Communism locked up inside its empire.
¶ Successfully countered Nikita Khrushchev’s year-long campaign to bluff, panic and cajole the allies into an empty summit meeting designed only to divide allies and get Western acceptance of Communist conquests.
¶ Firmly endorsed and sometimes led the massive continental surge of U.S. allies in Europe through private-enterprise prosperity toward greater political-economic unity, symbolized by the six-nation European Common Market, which goes into effect this week.
¶ Showed a sophisticated, no-comment restraint while De Gaulle turned France from cold-war weak spot to potential strong spot (see FOREIGN NEWS).
¶ Encouraged and supported the military regimes that came to power in South Asia and the Sudan, accepting them as a means of orderly growth toward democracy.
¶ Tried, but failed, to channel the Middle East’s tides of chaos.
¶ Gropingly attempted to define “new approaches” to growing nationalist movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America with new programs for the kind of economic trade-aid planning that had helped to save and inspire Western Europe.
The Precise Power. The U.S.’s holding of the free world’s defense lines made 1958’s most telling headlines. Architect of the defense was Secretary Dulles, who parceled out just enough U.S. power to keep the peace, but never more than enough. High points of crisis 1958:
JULY: LEBANON. When Arab nationalism, fanned by United Arab Republic President Nasser, blasted pro-Western Iraq out of the Middle East’s dwindling pro-Wrestern line-up in one night’s murderous palace revolution, the U.S. sent Sixth Fleet marines and Army paratroops into Lebanon at Lebanon’s request to secure it from overthrow by Nasserite rebels. Results: the U.S. 1) stabilized the situation in Lebanon for a few crucial months at least, 2) demonstrated to its allies worldwide that it was able and ready to support them, 3) showed above all that the Russians, when confronted by U.S. deterrent power, tend to back down. The U.S. also ordered air cover for British airborne landings in Jordan. But the revolt in Iraq—and the U.S. intelligence failure to anticipate it—left the U.S. no friendly government to support, no rallying point for action. Iraq and neighboring Syria are now coiled up in a squabble between Nasserism and Communism in what might make Dulles’ first big test of 1959. Year’s score in the Middle East: a net loss that could have been much worse.
AUGUST: QUEMOY. When Red China’s Mao Tse-tung conferred in Peking with Khrushchev, began bombarding the Chinese Nationalist offshore island of Quemoy, attempted in a U.S. congressional election year to scare off the U.S. with hair-raising war threats, the U.S. warned Red China that it intended to meet force with force (TIME, Dec. 29). Result: Red China backed down in a crushing loss of face, fired its army chief of staff. Year’s score in Asia: Red China lost great face.
NOVEMBER: BERLIN. When the Kremlin’s Khrushchev put out his provocative plan to turn prosperous, private-enterprise West Berlin into a “free city” demilitarized and disengaged from the cold war, the NATO governments proclaimed their intent to hold fast at Berlin. West Berliners themselves rejected Khrushchev’s “free-city” plan by voting 98.1% to 1.9% against the Communist candidates in city elections. Score at halftime: West leading in defense of a key position deep in Communism’s territory.
Sinews of Strength. As the U.S. met the pressure at the pressure points, the Pentagon gained new important experience in the actual practice of cold war on both its fighting and its psychological fronts. The Army put up the U.S.’s first Explorer space satellites. The Air Force sent a lunar-probe rocket 80,000 miles toward the moon, at year’s end fired one Atlas intercontinental missile 4,000 miles, another the full distance of 6,300 miles, still another into orbit, brought the Thor IRBM into the training stage and the hands of combat troops. The Navy sent the nuclear submarine Nautilus under the North Pole, made huge psychological warfare headlines, opened up a new strategic frontier.
Out of the confidence and the lessons of Lebanon and Quemoy, the Pentagon stepped up limited-war capability (from sixth priority to third priority, behind deterrent and retaliatory capability). But the broadening spectrum of limited power, and the growing military-diplomatic sophistication (the U.S. staff chiefs even have a planning committee for “pseudo-military” missions such as flying refugees from one country to another), still rested —as did the whole free world—under the air cover of the Strategic Air Command.
Promise of Growth. No less important was the turnaround, in 1958, from budget cutting to the beginnings of forward planning in foreign economic policy. One reason: Premier Khrushchev had dramatized economic warfare to millions of Americans fed on cliches about “handouts” when he proclaimed, “We declare war upon you in the peaceful field of trade. We are relentless in this, and it will prove the superiority of our system.”
Another reason: the U.S. found in Deputy Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon, onetime Wall Street investment banker, a foreign aid field commander with the tactical skill needed—and deployed—to prevail upon Congress to pass 1958’s $3.3 billion foreign aid appropriation. As much as it dramatized Communism’s infiltration of strategic, oil-rich Venezuela, the mobbing of Vice President Nixon in Caracas (TIME, May 26) underlined the urgent need for U.S. help for orderly economic growth in the hemisphere. Needed in Latin America, Asia and Africa alike was a new climate of incentive plans to lure more private-enterprise experts, more private-venture capital.
The Needed Lift. At year’s end the U.S. had many more reasons for hope and confidence than at year’s beginning under Sputnik’s beep-beep. The U.S. was solid on holding Berlin, unifying Germany by free elections, strengthening NATO, defending Formosa and Quemoy, adding to deterrent power, pressing and pressing again the need for more trade and aid. The strong foundation: the health of the U.S. economy and way of life as evidenced in 1958 by recovery from recession at home (confounding a basic Marxist proposition) and by the popularity overseas of U.S. staples that ranged from glass-walled skyscrapers and management consultants and supermarkets and consumer-credit washing machines and hula hoops and Benny Goodman at the Brussels Fair to the individual dedication of thousands of Americans serving on the cold-war front lines.
And throughout 1958 the U.S. was helped—inevitably to some, unexpectedly to others—by Communism’s continuing demonstration, in the execution of Hungarian Patriots Imre Nagy and Pal Maleter, the persecution of Russian Poet-Novelist Boris Pasternak, the mass herding by Mao of millions of Chinese into communes, that Communism is by definition implacably and unchangingly sinister—hence vulnerable.
But this, as President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon and others in the Administration high command are telling the inner councils, is not enough. To win this battle, Nixon told a TIME correspondent last week, the U.S. must move ahead—in stepped-up people-to-people exchanges; in training technicians, administrators, businessmen to serve overseas; in meeting and debating with Communists and neutralists in world labor unions, student organizations; in finding better ways of bolstering the cause of freedom behind the Iron Curtain.
It was the hope of 1959 that 1958’s limited success in cold-war foreign policy bred a tough U.S. restraint and a will to live with the battle in all its forms. It was the hope of the policy of decades that 1959 began with a general dissatisfaction with the broad aims and goals of U.S. policy as thus defined, a general determination to do something about them.
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