National Affairs: GIANT IN A SNARE

DESPITE the skill, authority and sincerity of the participants, the Great Debate on U.S. foreign policy still rang hollow. Through last week all sides had been more clear and forceful about what they didn’t want than about what they did want.

The “internationalists” warned of the dire consequences of losing of and the “isolationists” of the dire consequences of trying to save allies. Nobody held out any happier hope than averting the worst. There seemed to be no architects of foreign policy around — just building inspectors.

On every wall calamity teetered: Korea, the strained U.S. budget, laggard Western European defense, the danger of German rearmament, the weakness of the Middle East and Africa, the limitations of U.S. atomic bombing, the possibility of atomic attacks on the U.S. No doubt the inspectors were right. Disaster lurked in all these places, and in others too. The U.S. horizon, however, could not be ringed with nothing but catastrophe. Some of that smoke was in the eyes of the beholders.

That Helpless Feeling

Odd, perhaps unparalleled in history, was this obsession with danger by leaders of a nation as strong as the U.S. The beaten and the besieged naturally think in terms of survival, not of opportunity. For them, there is good reason to forget that, in human way to concentrate on survival is an almost sure way not to for No such excuse is available for the unbeaten, for those with wide freedom of action, for those who stand at the summit of power and responsibility. The U.S. still stands there.

Five years ago, none doubted the U.S. strength. Now doubts are everywhere. No neighborhood saloon lacks a master strate gist in can prove that the U.S. is helpless against the Reds in Korea or Indo-China, or Iran, or France. Such calamity-howling Clausewitzes are twice as thick in the Senate as in the saloons, twice as thick in the State Department as in the Senate, and twice as thick in the Pentagon as in the State Department.

Has the relative strength of the U.S. in the world changed that much in five years? Actually, Communism has made two —and only two — major gains : the atomic bomb and China. These two gains, great as they are, do not cut the U.S. down from the world’s first power to impotence. The U.S. has made some gains of its own during the past five years. Basic national unity has never been stronger. Mounting production has benefited all sections of the U.S. people (not a conclusive argument for capitalism, but certainly a timely reminder that capitalism is not finished). U.S. grants have helped put Western Europe on its postwar feet. And the U.S. has finally made up its mind about Communism, which it had not done five years ago.

The U.S. is still a giant. What makes it feel helpless? The answer might be to find what is wrong with the Great Debate.

The Absentee Pied Piper

In recent decades, the U.S. has taken more & more pride in wanting much from the rest of the world. It gives thanks it is not as other great powers were, exploiters, conquerors, In the case of the U.S., the boast is not altogether Nor is it altogether virtuous. The peculiar history the U.S. accounts for its lack of drive to dominate other It expanded by picking up (rather easily) almost empty which its borders. Its rise is a story of internal growth, which shows no sign of slackening—thus confounding the Euro economists, both Marxist and conservative, who are certain industrialized nations must reach out for foreign markets. For better or worse, U.S. business just hasn’t reached out.

The U.S. also lacks another kind of drive that has marked some great nations. Having absorbed on the basis of mutual tolerance people of so many lands and creeds, the U.S. has not and can have a “master race” complex or a “lawgiver” complex.

Nevertheless, tag is the on U.S. the is very revolution much of in the mass world. The “Made in America” tag is on the revolution of mass production that is disturbing the world far more profoundly than the reaction of Soviet Communism. Two hundred years ago, only a few individuals could achieve material comfort. After the industrial revolution, of a few nations could achieve it. But the techniques of mass production unleashed by the Americans 40 years ago prom ise comfort for all—and the promise is an honest one, technically redeemable. This promise runs through the world (especially through Asia) like a Pied Piper, leading men to drop ancient ways of life and follow it. But the American is not on the ground to organize the energy released by this promise. Neither hope of profit nor love of domination takes the American to the spot. He is content to be a Pied Piper on television.

The Communist, however, is on the ground; he leads those lured by the absentee Pied Piper back to misery and slavery.

The U.S., without meaning to, has let loose the most dynamic force in the world. The U.S. cannot silence the Pied Piper of progress. It can only try to redeem the promise of his pipes.

The Hand Washers

Failure to understand this at home & abroad frustrates the making of U.S. policy and accounts for both the wave of anti-foreign sentiment sweeping the U.S. and the wave of anti-American sentiment in Europe and Asia.

Though foreigners would gasp to hear it, the American thinks of himself as a stable, passive element in a disturbed world. The foreigner knows better: he knows that America is a prime mover in the world’s convulsions. When the American takes a step in international economic affairs, the non-American, who does not understand the peculiar U.S. economic background, suspects him of hypocritically looking for profit or trying to impose the American way of life. Similarly, the U.S. from time to time gets into these unreal “Great Debates” over “internationalism” v. “isolationism,” because the American is caught between his own “Americanism” feeling is a of highly passivity and explosive the force acting on the world.

Thus the “Great Debate” of 1918-20 frittered out in an ignominious U.S. withdrawal from responsibility. The “Great Debate” of 1933-41 was getting nowhere when it was adjourned —but not really settled—by Pearl Harbor. Even before that war was over, U.S. leaders at Yalta were washing their hands of responsibility. They agreed to lines that excluded from U.S. in fluence millions of Poles, Czechs, Germans, Hungarians, Rumanians, Bulgarians and Chinese. Franklin Roosevelt, who grew up in the tradition of the high-walled American citadel, wanted to call World War II “The Survival War.”

The symbol of the citadel, the wall, the defensive line, dominates the thought of even the most thoroughgoing American “internationalists.” The American does not see himself leaping the seas, like the Athenian or the Briton, to bring order and progress to distant lands, and from there look on to other distant opportunities. When the American leaps the seas, he digs a ditch. He makes a perimeter and says, “Don’t step over this.”

This accounts for an ingrained habit of U.S. foreign policy makers: drawing loops on maps to show “what we will hold.” Last week the U.S. political air was fuller of loops than a Wyoming rodeo. Secretary Acheson had the biggest loop, although it was frayed and limp and the knot kept slipping. It went around Western Europe, but maybe not Germany, and maybe not Spain, and probably not Africa. A separate strand encircled Greece and Turkey. All of Secretary Acheson’s friends agreed that Iran should be inside the loop, but nobody was doing much about putting it there. India was probably inside, although it had not been persuaded that it ought to be. China, including Formosa, never had been there. Japan was. Korea wasn’t until the Communists attacked it and then it was, and now most of it isn’t again.

Ex-President Hoover’s loop is smaller. It leaves out continental Europe, takes in England and Formosa and Japan. Ex-Ambassador Kennedy’s takes in only the Western Hemisphere.

Instead of a big loop, Senator Taft has a lot of little loops, each protecting an island. Senator Taft even has some doubts that Malaya, which is only about 200 miles across and has some 1,000 miles of coastline, can be protected by sea power. No reasonable American will argue against Senator Taft’s main thesis that the U.S. should emphasize its sea and air power. But Taft’s definition of sea power is the most modest since Noah’s. The British Empire, based on sea power, managed to hold secure great land masses as much as 1,500 miles from salt water, because the British regarded the sea not as a moat, but as a road.

The Borders

The Borderers The citadel or loop mentality also explains the present con fusion at Lake Success over what to do about the Korean war.

The trouble goes back to the drafting of the U.N. charter. U.N.’s goal should have been to establish and maintain international justice. Instead of this bold positive program, U.N.’s goal be came the prevention of “aggression,” narrowly denned. Aggression, for instance, did not include the undermining of one state by the arms and agents of another state, as in the Chinese civil war. It meant only the crossing of a border by the official army of the aggressor.

The North Koreans were defiant enough to transgress even this restricted legal loop. The U.N. instantly reacted. But when Mac Arthur was chasing the Korean Reds toward the 38th parallel, an outcry arose that showed how deeply the border-crossing fetish had sunk into the Western mind. MacArthur, it was held, would in become an aggressor if he crossed the parallel in pursuit of the criminal force.

Here was a conception brand-new to the long and fruity annals of jurisprudence. Under this conception, if the policeman finds that the dagger has penetrated the victim’s flesh, it is permitted that he seize the criminal by the wrist and force him to withdraw the knife; but he may not take the dagger away, much less arrest the criminal.

At the time, the U.N. did not fall for this — quite. But worse was to come. As MacArthur approached the Chinese-Korean border, some of the border-minded began to howl as if the whole Eighth Army was marching up their spines. Then the Chinese poured over the border — but that did not count because it was not official; the Chinese Communist government said that there was nobody killing Americans in Korea but us volunteers.

Since then, the Korean war has been well looped up. There was the heroic and brilliant loop around Hungnam, and the less brilliant one around Seoul, and next, apparently, will be a loop around Pusan. Perimeters, however, even brilliant and heroic ones, have only two military purposes: to get out of and to move forward from. Where is the U.S. going to move from its Pusan perimeter (or from any of the other perimeters drawn by the participants in the Great Debate)?

The Non-Provokers

When its forces were hit in Korea, the U.N. reacted as no law-enforcement agency ever had before. It politely invited the Chinese government to come to Lake Success. Then appeared the unforgettable General Wu, the only man in history (so far) to have the exquisite pleasure of telling a world organization of 60 nations representing 1,845,000,000 people to go climb a flagpole. General Wu was not much interested in borders, loops or perimeters. He placed his government in the vanguard of “all the oppressed nations and peoples of the East,” who are struggling either against foreign rule or their own governments.

He clearly implied Chinese Communist help to the Reds of Japan, Indo-China and the Philippines.

General Wu’s country is flat on its back. It has no heavy industry and not enough food for its people. But Wu, unlike the participants in the U.S. Great Debate, did not seem worried about op country overextending itself. He was looking for opportunities, not for survival. What’s more, the free world’s analysts conceded to China a very good chance of making good on Wu’s threats to Japan and Southeast Asia.

Since then, the U.N. and the U.S. have totally ignored the plain China and political opportunity to hit lawbreaker China in the flank with air and sea power. To do so would be to cross the border of China, just seized by a gang of cutthroats who have no respect for anybody else’s borders. The U.N. has been concentrating on the danger of provoking the Communists. Judging by the Communist reaction to U.N. politeness, nothing provokes a Red as much as non-provocation.

Another factor inhibiting action against the mainland of China is that it is not included in anybody’s conception of the free world’s citadel, or perimeter, or loop. In other words, the loops do not keep the enemy out; they keep the forces of the free world in.

The U.S. seems to be trying to adjust to the world as it is, instead of leading the world where it wants to go and striking at the enemy who stands in the way. As long as the U.S. is passive, every specific problem from Indonesia to France is “impossible.” If the U.S. takes the initiative, most of the problems will be seen as opportunities. The closest Secretary Acheson has come to recognizing this is to say that the U.S. is trying to create “situations of strength.” But a situation of strength needs to be used to create new and greater situations of strength.

Samples of Action

Here are some specific examples of how the passive U.S. attitude paralyzes policy: Item: The Berlin airlift was a heaven-sent situation of strength. The U.S. accepted the gratitude and enthusiasm of the Germans, made no real effort to develop these into permanent assets. The airlift has become in German minds just a sentimental folk memory, like Santa Claus. Everybody is in favor of Santa Claus, but how many divisions can he raise? Item: Marshall Plan aid to France (as to other countries) created a magnificent situation of strength. The passivists stood back and admired it, a monument of American generosity, and made no effective political use of it. U.S. policy in France has failed and is still failing to get what the U.S. wants — a France that can and will defend itself. A weak-kneed French government is the obstacle. Weak-kneed U.S. policy actually supports that government.

Item: Greatest situation of strength of all is in the Anglo-American alliance. This endures but it does not advance. At the moment, it is beset by suspicion and recriminations on both sides of the Atlantic. The British hang back because they cannot see just what, if anything, the Americans are trying to do.

Item: Spain is anti-Communist and has the largest army (372,000) in Western Europe. It guards the Mediterranean and is a bridge to Africa. The passivists ignore Spain because it creates no crisis. If Spain had a Communist revolution, the country would suddenly seem all important to Washington. But as an asset? No interest.

Item : Iran stands between the Russians and the Middle East oil they would like to have and which Western Europe must have to live. The passivists look sadly at Iran’s internal weak ness and shake their heads. That is not the only way for an American to look at Iran. Last month a TIME correspondent talked to U.S. engineers in Iran. Some spoke in glowing terms of a future in which Iran could support 50 million people and be a breadbasket for the whole Middle East. One said, “Damn, I wish I were 35 instead of 55. Then I’d have 20 good years left in me to see this country bloom the way our own West has done.” A man who can look at poverty-stricken Iran and see the Imperial Valley of California in the future obviously has not got his mind on mere survival or perimeters.

Opportunities Everywhere

No matter how long or short the loops on the map are doodled, to will never be the right size for a U.S. fire brigade to put out all the fires the enemy can start on them.

The U.S. and its allies, however, have the power — if they have the will — to move forward and build up the strength and resolution of the anti-Communist world. Who can draw a loop around that world? It runs up to the Iron Curtain. It runs behind the Iron Curtain. Scores of millions belong to it in Poland and in Hungary, in China and in Russia. All of them are potential allies. All of them are opportunities.