A Choice of Weapons

The words of the U.S. were carefully chosen, and pitched to carry beyond Panmunjom to Peking, and beyond Peking to Moscow. Their message: the U.S. has come to the end of its patience in the ten-month effort to achieve an armistice in Korea, and will fall back no further. Said the departing U.N. commander, General Matthew Ridgway: "The issues are clear, the stakes are manifest. Our position is one from which we cannot and shall not retreat."

Unthinkable & Repugnant. The line was drawn on the question of repatriating some 100,000 (out of 170,000) Communist prisoners now in U.N. camps, who have said they will fight any effort to send them back behind the Red frontiers. "To agree to forced repatriation would be unthinkable," said the President of the U.S., breaking his rule against commenting publicly on the Korean truce talks. "It would be repugnant to the fundamental moral and humanitarian principles which underlie our action in Korea. We will not buy an armistice by turning over human beings for slaughter or slavery."

The decision was not lightly taken. Last winter the Pentagon, knowing that Communists would argue long to prevent the loss of 100,000 men, was willing to give up the prisoners for the sake of the armistice and the return of U.N. prisoners in Communist camps. But the State Department, to its credit, sensed the deep moral implications of such a surrender, and took the issue to the President. Late in January, Harry Truman, fully briefed on the risks, made up his mind. Last week's U.S. statement was not an ultimatum (since it made no threats and set no time limit), but it clearly left future moves to the Chinese Communists--and future moves might well include the big push of the war.

Retaliation. The next obvious question was, what can the U.S. do if the war is renewed? The Communists have used the long stalemate to build up their forces, their antiaircraft fire and their air force to the point where the U.S. probably cannot inflict enough damage in Korea to make the Reds give in on the prisoner issue or any other issue. Last week in Paris, U.S. Statesman John Foster Dulles, seven weeks retired as State Department adviser on the Far East, had an answer:

Open aggression of Red armies should be instantly answered by air and sea at tacks on the home bases of the aggressors.

"So long as Soviet and Chinese Communist leaders can pick the time, place and method of aggression anywhere in Asia," said Dulles, "and so long as we only rush ground troops to meet it at the time they select, at the place they select, and with the weapons they select, we are at a disadvantage which can be fatal. On the other hand, the free world possesses, particularly in sea and air power, the capacity to hit an aggressor where it hurts, and at times and places of our own choosing."

Deterrent Influence. "If a potential aggressor knew in advance that his aggression would bring that answer, then I am convinced that he would not commit aggression . . . Siberia and much of China, notably Manchuria, are vulnerable, from the standpoint of transport and communication . . . Is it not time that the Chinese Communists knew that if, for example, they send their Red armies openly into Viet Nam [Indo-China], we will not be content merely to try to meet their armed forces at the point they select . . . but by retaliatory action of our own fashioning?

"I believe, indeed, that the possibility that this retaliation might happen is what has, in fact, already been deterring the Soviet and Chinese Communists from more open armed aggression in Asia today. But would it not be better if that deterrent influence were openly and unashamedly organized on behalf of the Community of Free Nations? That could be done within the framework of the U.N. charter . . ." Tacit Sponsor? Five months ago the U.S. National Security Council agreed "in principle" to the doctrine of retaliation (TIME, Jan. 14, 28). But the U.S. had never officially proclaimed its policy, and thereby had lost the deterrent power that such a policy might have on Red aggression. Last week there were signs that the Administration was stiffening to the point where it might publicly adopt the specifics of the Dulles policy as its own. For one thing, the text of Dulles' speech was distributed by the U.S. Embassy in Paris, which implied a tacit sponsorship. Moreover, high policymakers of the State Department were saying privately last week that the Communists are on firm notice that the U.S. is prepared to seize the weapons of its choice if war breaks out again. Said one Washington planner: "If they can read, they know what we mean."

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