Foreign Policy Debate

Long before the 1952 campaign began in earnest, Democrats from Harry Truman down were saying that foreign policy should not be an issue. That attitude was based on the contention that the Administration's policy is 100% correct, and that to argue about it would give aid to the Communists. Last week the Democrats' dream of silence about foreign policy lay shattered and broken.

The full-fledged battle on foreign policy was touched off in Dwight Eisenhower's speech to the American Legion's national convention (TIME, Sept. 1). Eisenhower said that there was no way to live peacefully with Communism "until the enslaved nations" have the "right to choose their own path."

Liberation? John Foster Dulles, Ike's chief foreign policy adviser, promptly expanded on this theme. Under the Eisenhower policy, said Dulles, the President would refuse to make any deal which recognized the Soviet Union's permanent right to control the captive peoples. Instead, the U.S. would encourage the spirit of resistance behind the Iron Curtain, and private U.S. organizations would help to integrate the resistance movements and would provide supplies.

Although the Democratic platform calls for liberation of the Iron Curtain countries, Democratic orators cried out in horror at the Eisenhower-Dulles position. A war-provoking plan, they cried. Harry Truman saw no hope of improving on Harry Truman's policies. He said: "There is no way to do more than this without using force. To try to liberate these enslaved people at this time might well mean turning these lands into atomic battlefields."

Adlai Stevenson leaped into the fight (TIME, Sept. 8). At Detroit-surrounded Hamtramck, he said that Eisenhower's statement led to "speculation here and abroad that if he were elected, some reckless action might ensue in an attempt to liberate the peoples of Eastern Europe from Soviet tyranny." He added: "I tell you now that I will never fear to negotiate in good faith with the Soviet Union, for to close the door to the conference room is to open a door to war."*

John Foster Dulles fired back. It is "absurd," said Dulles, to suggest that Eisenhower was proposing war or "wholesale insurrection by unarmed slaves . . . There are countless peaceful ways by which the task of the Russian despots can be made so unbearably difficult that they will renounce their rule. That was shown in Yugoslavia. Prolonged unwillingness to try new methods in solving international problems is ... endangering our own safety as Russian conquests are being consolidated against us ... General Eisenhower's policies are the true peace policies . . . We can trust the man who won peace, rather than the man who lost it."

Prevention ? This was where the debate stood last week as Eisenhower came to Philadelphia. After the warmest welcome of his campaign, he rose before a cheering audience to deliver his first major speech on foreign policy. He first took up the warmongering charge: The U.S., he said, should "aid by every peaceful means, but only by peaceful means, the right to live in freedom. The containing of Communism is largely physical and by itself an inadequate approach to our task. There is also need to bring hope and every peaceful aid to the world's enslaved peoples. We shall never be truculent--but we shall never appease . . .

"Seven years after victory in World War II," Ike charged, "this Administration has bungled us perilously close to World War III . . . Why are we at war in Korea? . . . We are in that war because of failure to observe some of the principles for preventing war . . . because this Administration grossly underestimated the actual threat ... [and] allowed America, in a time when strength was needed, to become weak . . . We are in that war because, having helped set up the Korean republic, and, knowing that strength was being massed against that republic north of its borders, there was a failure to build up adequate strength in Korea's own defense forces. We are in that war because this Administration abandoned China to the Communists . . . [and] announced to all the world that it had written off most of the Far East as beyond our direct concern.

"Shall we trust the party which wrote that tragic record to win the peace? . . . Must we go on with patchwork, crazyquilt operations? Must we go on with one policy for Europe, a feeble policy for South America, little policy for the Middle East, and changing policies for Asia? Must we go on writing off the Far East at one moment and at almost the next finding our sons fighting and dying in Korea? Must we at one time woo the Soviets as though they could be trusted, and then fall into hysterical fear of them? You and I know statesmanship can do better than that."

Eisenhower outlined a program for winning the peace, and preventing "future Koreas." It must begin, he said, with establishing in Washington an Administration the people can trust, an Administration that trusts the people. There must be clear and positive goals. The U.S. must win and hold allies, support the United Nations, keep America economically and militarily strong.

Then Candidate Eisenhower took a final thrust at the Administration on its unmentionable issue: "The one--the only --way to win World War III is to prevent it ... We can effectively discourage any further dangerous moves of Communist-planned aggression . . . Let's sweep this country with such a wave of resolve, determination and action that the little men, the defeatists, the false prophets of the false doctrine that it can't be done, will be tossed out of power and the real America given a chance to move in."

*In a San Francisco speech last May, Stevenson was somewhat more explicit about what the U.S. might do in the conference room. He said: "We have had little discussion ... of the conditions for coexistence [with Russia] and probably will get little during the campaign. Unless and until Americans are prepared by prolonged public consideration of what it will be necessary to concede, negotiations may make little progress . . . There has been so much emphasis on ... showing a stern, tough face to the Russians that there has been little useful discussion of the bargaining alternatives."

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