National Affairs: Foreign Policy: Ike

The Nixon excitement almost drowned out Eisenhower’s best speech to date on the paramount issue: the Democratic handling of the world crisis with Communism, the crisis on which hang war and peace. As if to answer critics (including Stevenson) who say that Senator Taf t is now in charge of the Republican campaign, Ike picked Taft’s home town, Cincinnati, for a speech that Taft could not make.

“We declare,” said Ike, “that we, the free of the Western world, can never find our salvation in any attempt to stand apart and live completely alone in this world.” But at the same time he called for a change from the “unhappy record” of U.S. foreign policy during the last seven years, in which “we have been losing whole nations to the enemies of freedom.”

“Dollars and guns,” he said, “are no substitute for brains and will power.” He made a thinly veiled attack on President Truman and Democratic Candidate Adlai Stevenson: “It is not hard to find men long on courage and short on brains. But this is no time for boldness without reflection and purpose. It is not hard to find men of fine intellect and faint heart. But this is no time for men of refined and elaborate indecision. The American people,” he went on, “have been condemned [by Administration foreign policy] to live in a purgatory of improvisation.”

The record of the last seven years, he charged, “finds its climax in Korea … In January of 1950 our Secretary of State declared that America’s so-called ‘defensive perimeter’ excluded areas on the Asiatic mainland such as Korea. He said in part: ‘No person can guarantee these areas against military attack. It must also be clear that such a guarantee is hardly sensible or necessary . . . It is a mistake . . . in considering Pacific and Far Eastern problems to become obsessed with military considerations.’ Five months later, Communist tanks were rolling over the 38th Parallel.”

Train of the Future. “I proudly salute the gallant American fight in Korea . . . What I deplore in [the] cases of Berlin and Korea is this: the incompetence of political leaders which made military action necessary. Democracies cannot afford the luxury of assigning armies of soldiers to go around ‘picking up’ after their statesmen.

“A deadly result of this playing by ear has been to frustrate the free world’s quest for unity. I mean this in three specific ‘ senses. We have no single, coherent policy in Asia . . . We have failed to use our influence to the fullest to bring about unity in Western Europe . . . We have failed to achieve real unity of spirit with our allies. The truth is that . . . our relation with them has remained too much that irksome bond which binds debtor and creditor . . .

“The record of our failures … to this date is sobering enough in itself. But consider the smugness with which the Administration policymakers have accepted their failures … It takes smugness to try to stifle critics, as the Democratic candidate did last week, with the epigram that ‘A wise man does not try to hurry history.’ Every American knows the answer to that one. Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.”

This Defensive Way. “[U.S.] policies have become shadowed by doubt and indecision . . . The Democratic candidate gave us in his recent San Francisco speech a dismaying example of this faintness of heart, this curiously defensive way of thinking. He said: ‘With 85% of our budget allocated to defense, it is the Soviet Union which now fixes the level of . . . our tax rates.’ It is true of course that the . . . taxpayer is burdened heavily by the Soviet threat. But what the Democratic nominee confessed was that, under the present Administration policy, the taxpayer is dancing to the Soviet tune . . .

“I cite these smug evasions because they suggest what I am fighting for in this campaign. The American people need a government that knows enough about arms and armies to work out the most defense at less cost with the least delay. It needs a government that recognizes the Korean war as a critical problem demanding solution. It needs a government willing to call upon all its members for absolute loyalty … It needs a government that is in a hurry to face its problems, however tough they may be.

“If we do this, we will save America from becoming a beleaguered outpost of a weary democratic world. We will proclaim America to be—what she must ever be—the headquarters of freedom.”