Back to the Factory

When the U.S. DC-6 bearing Secretary of State John Foster Dulles appeared over Don Muang Airport one afternoon last week, Thailand's Prime Minister Pibulsonggram was still fretfully edging his way through Bangkok traffic in his Ford Thunderbird. Informed by the airport tower, the pilot of the Dulles plane circled for seven minutes until the Prime Minister thundered onto the field. Bangkok was a courtesy call for Dulles: there were no critical problems to be ironed out. After he departed the next day (Pibulsonggram and the Thunderbird were late for the goodbye) only three of the eight Thai language papers mentioned his visit.

Reassuring & Wooing. In Dulles' 20-day, ten-country tour of Asia, none of the calls could be called urgent; the Secretary's purpose was not to seek or to make new commitments but to explain U.S. policy, reassuring friends and wooing neutrals. He worked hard and well at the job.

At the meeting of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization Council of Foreign Ministers in Karachi, Dulles helped to bolster SEATO's determination to move forward on military and economic legs. In New Delhi he sought to convince Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that the U.S. is not a warmonger and would like to be a closer friend to India. In Djakarta (where the Times of Indonesia had declared only a few weeks earlier: "That man should be kept out of here, by force if necessary") Dulles' car was heckled by youths who cried, "Down with SEATO!" But when he left, after inviting Prime Minister Achmed Soekarno to visit the U.S., most Indonesian circles --even the Times--seemed to feel that his visit was eminently successful.

In Manila, where Dulles announced that the U.S. will build its atomic research center for Asia in the Philippines, he left behind elation and renewed morale. In Taipei and in Seoul he held friendly conferences with Formosa's Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and with Korea's President Syngman Rhee. In sensitive Japan he carefully went through Japanese immigration procedures, had his passport stamped, and spoke of the "relationship of peace, friendship and cooperation" between Japan and the U.S.

It was clear that John Foster Dulles thawed some of the coolness where thawing was needed, e.g., in India and Indonesia, and stoked some of the warmth where it needed to be stoked.

Opportunities & Dangers. But these are times when more than thawing and stoking is needed. The sob-punctuated speech of Communist Party Boss Nikita Khrushchev (see FOREIGN NEWS) threw new light on a critical area of weakness in the Soviet system. To exploit the opportunities offered by that weakness, the U.S. needs, more than ever, a bold, imaginative, skillful foreign policy.

It is also apparent that while the Secretary of State was traveling in the Far East, new dangers for U.S. policy were arising in the Middle East and in North Africa. There was uneasiness in a number of the world's capitals about whether Dulles' State Department was organized and administered well enough to meet those problems as they should be met. A photograph of Dulles lying on a beach in Ceylon when there was highly disturbing news on the shores of the Mediterranean was splashed five columns across the front page of a London newspaper under the caption U.S. HEAVYWEIGHT.

As he headed home this week it was high time for the traveling salesman to get back to the factory, there to produce some foreign policy to sell.

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