The Yalta Doctrine

No doubt about it--the Russians were changing. At Yalta, as at earlier conferences, Stalin and other Soviet bigwigs shed a little more of their personal isolation.

Stalin mugged the cameras, patently loved to show off his fine grey uniforms. His stock of English phrases had grown: "So what?" and "You said it" had been added to "The toilet is over there!" and "What the hell goes on here?" Now one of his problems is the ingrained aloofness of Politburo men and others in the Soviet hierarchy who feel that Russia is having too much truck with foreigners.

But the international yeast was working. Perhaps it had something to do with Yalta's implications for the future:

Deed of Trust. Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill bluntly said that the three powers who had "made victory possible and certain" proposed to administer the victory. Big Three unity for this purpose was "a sacred obligation which our Governments owe to our peoples and to all the peoples of the world."

This assertion of high purpose had some very practical roots. It was a logical expression of Stalin's cold certainty that only power counts (said he once of the Pope, "How many divisions has he got?"). It was an equally natural extension of President Roosevelt's recent assertion that the U.S. intends not only to take a responsible part in world affairs but to shape the decisions for which it shares responsibility. For Winston Churchill, the doctrine of trusteeship was insurance that a Britain exhausted by the war will have a position in keeping with Britain's needs.

But Big Three assertions alone cannot make trusteeship work. That will also require the conscious, wholehearted, fully informed support of the U.S. people. And it will require tacit acceptance by the hundreds of millions of people for whom the Big Three propose to be trustees.

Whose Trust? In Europe, where the first test must come, first reactions were not promising. At best, the Poles were uneasy; at worst, certain that they had been sold out. But the selling out of the Poles had actually occurred many months ago. In the first days after Yalta, the major test of the Yalta doctrine was France.

Despite its gestures toward the French, the Crimea declaration made it clear that the Big Three did not yet rate France as one of the trustees, even in western Europe. Even the cordial paragraph inviting "the Provisional Government of the French Republic" to join in the guardianship of liberated Europe implied that the Big Three could get along without France.

The French rebelled. Their press reflected some but by no means all the popular resentment. General de Gaulle had already made it plain that France intended to be not one of the trusteed but one of the trustees. Now he pointedly announced that France would handle its own empire. Finally, he declined to leave Paris for an aftermath session with President Roosevelt, who had hoped to pause in North Africa on his way home and soothe the General. If Roosevelt wanted to see him, said De Gaulle, the President would have to come to Paris.

These initial irritations were probably not so serious as they seemed. In a speech asserting the principle of French equality last fortnight (TIME, Feb. 19), De Gaulle himself reminded the French people that they still have to earn the right to actual equality. All concerned faced the same hard facts: France cannot recover without Big Three help; the Big Three cannot run liberated Europe and postwar Germany without a resurgent, reasonably satisfied France.

Concert of Spheres. In the first glow, some optimists had read more into the Big Three declaration on liberated Europe than the Big Three actually said. Even among the Big Three, contests for power and spheres of influence were not finally abolished at Yalta. Yalta could be taken as an incomplete check on a race for spheres of influence.

In principle, the Big Three agreed to "concert" their interests and policies in such troubled countries as Greece and Poland. But the statement of principle included some significant limitations: 1) it holds good only "during the temporary period of instability"; 2) the big powers are bound to act together only when all three agree that the specific circumstances of each case justify their joint intervention.

Concert of Votes. The sorest point settled at Yalta was the dispute over voting procedure in the postwar world Security Council.

Joseph Stalin did not budge an inch from his insistence that any one of the Big Powers must be able to veto world action against itself or against any other country accused of aggression. But the compromise engineered by President Roosevelt was neither so cynical nor so futile as it seemed to some commentators.

Under the compromise, the Security Council's Big Five (the Big Three plus France and China) must agree unanimously before the world organization can take economic or military action against an aggressor. But any seven (nominally, two-thirds) of the Council's eleven members can cite an aggressor nation, bring its sins to world attention.

The provision requiring a two-thirds vote instead of a simple majority to do this is a marked concession to the smaller powers. It means that the Big Five, even when united, cannot commit the world organization to any action without approval of at least two of the Council's little-nation members. At least in theory, six smaller members could join forces with one of the Big Five to override the other four in preliminary decisions.

When the United Nations convene in April to revise the original Dumbarton Oaks proposals, these considerations may outweigh the right of veto retained by the Big Powers. Everyone in San Francisco will know that, anyhow, whatever the rules, no nation could be made to declare war on itself.

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