FOREIGN RELATIONS: In Our Interest & Theirs

In the Grand Ballroom of Manhattan’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Vice President Richard Nixon rose one night last week to deliver a major U.S. foreign policy statement. Before him sat 1,500 members of the Automobile Manufacturers Association in town for the National Automobile Show (see BUSINESS). The Vice President had a twofold mission: 1) to answer the weeks of criticism of U.S. policy in the Middle East, and 2) to lay new groundwork for the strengthening of the Atlantic alliance and the whole free world.

With a text that had been discussed with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Nixon began by reviewing the 40-day world crisis. There had been “some observers of world affairs . . . the critics of despair and the prophets of doom,” who had proclaimed a massive Soviet victory in the Middle East. These critics, Nixon believed, were taking “a shortsighted and, if I might respectfully say so, immature view of the issues.” When Israel, Britain and France attacked Egypt, the world wondered whether the U.S. would stand by its principles, or because its friends were involved, would “conveniently look the other way.” If the U.S. had supported the British-French-Israeli position in Egypt, they “might have won a military victory in that area. But they and we would have lost the moral support of the whole world . . . Because we took the position we did, the peoples of Africa and Asia now know that the U.S. has no illusions about ‘the white man’s burden’ and ‘white supremacy.’ The military victory our friends might have won in the Near East would not have solved . . . the problem. Lasting solutions are rarely forged in the ruins of war.”

“Eternal Credit.” Linking the U.S. position on the two menacing arms of world crisis, the Vice President said that the U.S. stand on the Middle East made the U.S. fit and qualified to condemn Soviet barbarity in Hungary. Such condemnation was the U.S.’s sole weapon, “since the alternative was action on our part which might initiate the third and ultimate world war.” The Freedom Fighters of Budapest, said Nixon, won a great victory in the battle for men’s minds. “The lesson is etched in the mind and seared in the souls of all mankind. Can it be seriously suggested that any nation in the world today would trust the butchers of Budapest?”

Then the Vice President moved on to the next logical phase of U.S. foreign policy. From the first day of Suez, President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had insisted that the U.S. difference with its allies over Suez should not obscure the long-term values and meanings of the Atlantic alliance.* Nixon urged his listeners to give the British and French “eternal credit” for eventu ally accepting the U.N. resolutions on the cease-fire and withdrawal of troops. He urged less attention to fault-finding and more to seeking a long-range settlement in the Middle East.

Nixon then ventured into a politically delicate area by speaking of “the financial plight” of Britain in a way that seemed to suggest big new U.S. economic aid. Said the Vice President: “I believe it is in our interest as well as theirs to assist them in this hour of difficulty.”

Earlier in the week the U.S. had received a request from Britain for a waiver of payment of some $81 million of interest due this month on past U.S. loans. There was every indication that Congress will, after some protest, grant the request. The U.S. was ready to provide the International Monetary Fund with approximately $500 million in cash. There is also talk in Washington that the U.S. Export-Import Bank might be ready to advance perhaps $200 million in loans to finance purchases of Western Hemisphere oil.

“Generous Aid.” Beyond advocating help for the Atlantic alliance, Nixon foreshadowed a new U.S. emphasis on much broader foreign economic aid. Of the nations of the Middle East, he said: “There must be generous aid in solving their very real economic problems so that their peoples may rise from the depths of poverty and disease. In the past these nations of the Middle East used their meager resources to build up military strength. Now we have the unique opportunity to show them what can be done by using their resources to build up the health and welfare of their peoples.”

Obviously such a broad new venture would not be without domestic U.S. opponents—whom Nixon, perhaps, was better placed than Eisenhower or Dulles to convince and win over. Even Treasury Secretary George Magoffin Humphrey took to a podium in the Waldorf-Astoria before flying to Paris for the NATO meeting to assert that some estimates of Western Europe’s need for new U.S. aid had been “greatly exaggerated. The fact is that in all probability existing institutions will be able to provide most of the assistance that may be needed.” But the fact also was that any aid program backed wholeheartedly by Eisenhower, Nixon and Dulles would have great political strength in Congress and in the country.

*Said the President on Oct. 31: “We believe these actions [Suez] to have been taken in error, for we do not accept the use of force as a wise or proper instrument for the settlement of international disputes. To say this, in this particular instance, is in no way to minimize our friendship.” *The British Broadcasting Corp. taped his speech for later rebroadcasting to Britain.