Evening star., 1953-12-02
On Mccarthy and Foreign Policy

In eHecC, With President EiSenhower'S full
approval, Secretary of State Dulles has now
served notice that the administration has picked
up Senator McCarthys challenge in the inter-
national field and is ready to stage, if it must,
knock-down- and drag out political fight with
him and his followers.
Mr.. Dulles has made this clear in his hard
hitting and eloquent statement answering the
Senator's pernicious attack last week on "the
very heart" of American foreign policy. Com
pounded of number of distortions and gross
oversimpliflcations, the attack Slyly suggested
that the President and his Secretary of State
were following program of whining whin1-
pering appeaSement," and it went on from
there to demand that they resort forthwith to
coercive measures (Such as threats to cut off
add to bully and browbeat Britain and other
allied countries into doing what Mr. Mccarthy
insists upon having done.
1t need hardly be added, of course, that if
the United States were to follow such advice, it
would soon find itself without any allies worthy
OF the name. For no self-reSpecting nation
would tolerate the kind of treatment that the
Wisconsin Senator advocates Instead, our
friends abroad would break away from us, and
our country would then stand alone, and gravely
endangered, in hostile world dominated
largely by the Soviet Union. To that extent,
strangely enough, the course espoused by Mr..
Mccarthy is in perfect rapport with the Krem-
Inns ceaSeleSS effort to SOW interallied dis
SenSlon, drive wedges between us and our
strongest partners in the West, disntegrate the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and in
general isolate us from the economic, political
and military associations that bind us now to
the free world.
Happily, however, Mr.. Mccarthy, though
kind of Republican, does not speak for his party,
and least of all does he speak for the Eisen-
hover administration or the Nation at large.
Mr.. Dulles has left no room for doubt on that
score. Nor has he left any room for doubt about
how our Government will continue to conduct
its international relations 1t will continue,
despite the Wisconsin Senator's divisive counsel.
to deal with other free lands as sovereign equals;
to show decent respect for their opinions; to
help itself by helping them; to avoid the foolish
and fatal mistake of resorting to clustering
and domineering methods" in seeking to settle
marginal diSagreementS with them; to try not
to be arrogant or demand of them what we
ourselves would reject if circumstances were
reversed; to be thankful that they are on our
side; and to appreciate, above everything, that
we need them as never before in our history
because our country, without them would be
isolated in the world and in mortal peril"
AS Mr. Dulles has emphasized, these funda-
mentalS of our foreign policy are rooted deep
in our American traditions, and President
Eisenhower and his administration are not going
to depart from them just because the Senator
from Wisconsin scowls against them in tele-
vision program. They are not going to be
abandoned for the very good and simple reason
that we could not have true allies without them
And allies are important to us. For without
them to cite but one of many SOLDERING facts
we would not now have the advanced overseas
bases that deter the Kremln from launching
an atomic attack uS-deter it because it
knows that those bases give us the power to
strike back with annihilating retaliation.
Similarly, without our friends abroad, we
could not develop an early warning system
against the very real danger of sudden enemy
assault with A-weapons and hydrogen bombs.
And beyond that, besides being thus dependent
on our allies for prevention and defense against
atomic attack, we must rely on their large
industrial strength to keep the international
balance of power in favor of the free world.
Certainly, in Mr.. Dulles words, eff their re-
sources and facilities fell into the Soviet bloc,
it would have the advantage over us not only in
the possibility of an initial Knockout blow, but
also in terms of capacity to win long drawn
out war"
Mr.. Mccarthy and his friends may dissent
violently. But it seems safe to assume that
they will not have the support of the vast
majority of the American people. After all,
in the atomic age, the average citizen must
surely be knowing enough to realize that our
foreign policy can be subjected to reckless
attack, and our allies alienated, only at the
risk of imperiling the life of the Nation.