THE NATIONS: Big Two

The U.S. would trust in God, and keep its plutonium dry. With patience and firmness it would help to build a world of order. The Russians, who had neither God nor (as yet) plutonium, would have to trust the peace-loving U.S.

Every Life, Everywhere. President Truman, restating U.S. foreign policy (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), spoke directly to Americans who have freedom and want a secure peace. Indirectly, he also spoke to Britain, wartime ally and uneasy peacetime junior partner; to lesser allies who look to the U.S. for leadership; to people everywhere who want freedom; and to the Russians.

U.S. foreign policy touched every life in every country. Yet the political power world turned around the Big Two. Just as Russian foreign policy was judged largely by its effect on the U.S., so any statement of U.S. policy would be judged by its effect on Russia. The question was not whether the Russians would like Truman’s policy, but whether they would understand and respect it. The deeply distrustful Russians, doubly distrustful of generalities, would try to apply Truman’s words to specific problems and places.

Only in the Balkans (see FOREIGN NEWS) would they have much success in judging the words by the realities. There, the reiterated refusal of the U.S. to recognize “any government imposed upon any nation by the force of any foreign power” was all too clear to the Russians. Elsewhere, in focal Germany, in restive Asia, words and numbered paragraphs which seemed explicit enough to Americans at home would seem vaguely general to the Russians, Britons, Chinese, et al. trying to evaluate them, and to the U.S. officials charged with applying them. Still needed were clear directives, clearly integrated actions to make the policy intelligible at the point where it must work.

Similarity of Opposites. In some vital respects the Truman policy and Russian policy were curiously alike.

Truman said the U.S. needed the world’s greatest military might in order to: 1) enforce the peace on Germany and Japan. 2) fulfill our obligations to UNO, 3) defend the Western Hemisphere, and 4) defend the U.S. By substituting “countries bordering the U.S.S.R.” for “Western Hemisphere,” the Russians could state their policy in the same terms.

From the viewpoint of lesser nations who had to put their whole trust in collective security, the Big Two were dangerous not because their foreign policies were so different, but because they were so much alike. And they were alike because each of the Big Two, atomic bomb or no, trusted more in its own ability to defend itself than in collective action.