A Straight Shot

Months before the election, when John Foster Dulles was trying to show the need for a foreign policy stronger than containment, he proposed a new course of action. "We could make it clear, on the highest authority of the President and the Congress.'' he wrote, "that U.S. policy seeks as one of its peaceful goals the eventual restoration of genuine independence in the nations . . . now dominated by Moscow, and that we will not be a party to any 'deal' confirming the rule of Soviet despotism over the alien peoples which it now dominates."

Last week, in line with Dulles' objective. President Eisenhower asked Congress to pass a joint resolution: 1) rejecting "any interpretations or applications of any international agreements or understandings made during the course of World War II. which have been perverted to bring about the subjugation of free peoples," and 2) "proclaiming the hope" that such captive peoples "shall again enjoy the right of self-determination . . . in accordance with the pledge of the Atlantic Charter."

Headline Interpretation. Some Republicans--notably Chairman Alexander Wiley of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--were openly chagrined that the resolution did not flatly repudiate the Yalta and Potsdam agreements. The disappointment was understandable, because the Administration itself had been none too clear in its advance thinking about Dulles' high purposes. In his State of the Union message Eisenhower promised that he would ask Congress to make clear "that this Government recognizes no kind of commitment contained in secret understandings of the past with foreign government which permit this kind of enslavement." Many newsmen promptly interpreted this as meaning repudiation.

But both the White House and State knew that repudiation, for the U.S., was not now feasible. Even in today's jungle of diplomacy, the U.S. cannot offhandedly cancel its formal agreements. In the case of Nationalist China--which this week abrogated its treaty with Moscow (see INTERNATIONAL)--Russia was openly aiding and abetting a rival Chinese government, i.e., the Chinese Communists in Peking. But the U.S. is still committed to a kind of tense diplomatic equilibrium with Russia. Moreover, the Yalta and Potsdam agreements were so sweeping in import that repudiation might immediately put the U.S. face to face with the need for some kind of action to right the wrongs (e.g., to restore South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands to Japan).

Sharp Clarification. In drafting last week's resolution, both the President and Dulles came to grips with the specifics. Said Dulles: "The proposed joint declaration . . . has two primary purposes. One is to register dramatically what we believe to be the many breaches by the Soviet Union of the wartime understandings, and secondly, to register equally dramatically the desire and hope of the American people that the captive people shall be liberated."

The clarification was sharp and to the point. By accenting Soviet perversion of the intent of the agreements, the U.S. upheld its own moral position in observing the agreements. By declining to tax the Democrats anew for the faults of Yalta and Potsdam, the resolution shot over the heads of domestic politics to the captive peoples for whom it is intended.

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