The Cold War: The Creative Task

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any joe to assure the survival and success of liberty.

—John Kennedy, at his Inaugural Last week the U.S. was certainly bearing burdens and meeting hardships in the cause of liberty’s survival. The clouds of war still gathered over Berlin. In Southeast Asia, Communist Viet Cong guerrillas increased the bloody pace of their raids on the communities of South Viet Nam. In Manhattan, the U.S. worked tirelessly to preserve the United Nations, suddenly bereft of its capable Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold.

Other Goals. From Washington, President Kennedy mobilized the skills of U.S. diplomacy to keep the Soviet Union from imposing on the U.N. its concept of a three-man secretariat—an unworkable form of executive that would forever cripple the organization. Survival of the U.N. as a world forum and as a useful instrument for keeping the peace was well worth struggling for. But there are other goals, carrying far higher priority. They could be defined simply as:

> The preservation of the nation as a constitutional, democratic republic.

> The survival and success of liberty wherever it exists.

To carry out either of those basic purposes, the U.N. is at best a very imperfect instrument. The Security Council, controlled by five major nations of disparate ambitions, rests solely upon power. But liberty really rests upon law, and this principal failure of the U.N. Charter was noted by the late Republican Senator Robert Taft ten years ago: “The fundamental difficulty is that [the U.N. Charter] is not based primarily on an underlying law and an administration of justice under that law.” Moreover, with the threat of Security Council veto creating a stalemate of power, decisive action must come from a General Assembly where orderly decision is all but impossible.

More than ever before, responsible U.S. political thinkers are coming to recognize that the nation must, when necessary, go beyond the U.N. to achieve its intentions. One of the latest to do so is Arkansas Democrat William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who urges the U.S. to create and lead a new “concert of free nations,” united both by opposition to “the formidable threat of aggressive imperialistic Communism” and by “a feeling and deep conviction of shared values and interests” (see cover story).

Values & Tradition. President Kennedy and his Administration clearly have it within their power to begin the job of building an alliance of free nations sharing the same values and traditions. The U.S. is by far the richest nation on earth; its allies in Western Europe far surpass Russia in wealth, industrial strength and manpower skill. Despite Nikita Khrushchev’s vaunted boast to “bury” capitalism, the Soviet world is decades away from matching U.S. productivity and has not come near to solving a critical agricultural problem (TIME, May 26). In the so-called “peaceful competition” with the West, Khrushchev has been the loser so far—one reason, perhaps, why he has grown so belligerent over Berlin.

At all stages in the life of man, liberty has been a rare and precious commodity, but free men of strong will have never complained that the price was too high. Despite the threat of thermonuclear war, the U.S. clearly has a will to survive and succeed (see The People). Despite unemployment and small weaknesses in the economy, the nation has the prosperity to pay for freedom. There can be little doubt that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, if he asks for it, can gather the national riches and focus the national energy and will for the creative work that lies ahead in building stronger alliances to preserve and make liberty secure.