Evening star., 1954-01-14
Policy for the Long Haul

Policy for the Long Haul
Secretary of State Dulles in his New York
address to the Council on Foreign Relations has
set forth the most specific and most revealing
picture to date of how American global policy
has been revised during the first year of Presi-
dent Eisenhowers administration. Though evo-
lutionary rather than revolutionary, the revi-
sion is a profoundly important one. For it
means that highly significant changes are in
the making as regards the defense of the United
States and the free world as a whole.
In a military and economic sense, these
changes involve recasting of tactics and STRAIT
egy aimed at saving on armed manpower and
cutting the cost Of our interallied security in
accord with what can be done along that line
in the atomic age. And in a political sense,
which is at least equally important, the fact
that such a transformation is taking place, and
has been openly proclaimed by our Govern
ment, should serve as clear warning to the
Soviet Union that this Nation-aS far as can
be seen into the future or until there Is peace
in which everybody can have confidence-will
rely chiefly on A-weaponS and the hydrogen
bomb to deter Communist aggression or smash
back at it, massively and instantaneously, If it
cannot be deferred.
This policy, in MIR. Dulles words, is policy
that has been tailored for the "long haul or
for what the Kremlin envisions as "an entire
historical period" in which the Soviets, while
seeking to do the job without unleashing an
all-out war; will strive to divide the free nations
and bankrupt them into defeat by forcing them
to carry defensive burdens too heavy to bear. In
such period, in the teeth Of such an enduring
threat, emergency measures like those Of the
paSt-good measures at the time, measures like
Greco Turkish aio the Berlin airlift and the
action against aggression In KOrea-wOuld be
not only inadequate but also dangerous In that
they could break the economic back of our allied
world. That is why the President and the
National Security Council have reviewed the
whole international situation and reached a
number uf historic decisions, the most impor-
tant of which has been summed up as follows
by Mr.. Dulles:
The basic decision was to depend pri-
marily upon great capacity to retaliate in
stantly. by means and places of our choos-
ing. Now the Department OF Defense and the
Joint Chiefs of Staff can shape our military
establishment to At what is our policy instead
Of having to try to meet the enemy's many
choices. That permits of selection Of mill
tary means instead Of a multiplication OF
means. AS a result. 1t IS now possible to get,
and share. more basic security at less cost.
The practical meaning of this concept as
explained by Mr.. Dulles, is that we and our
allies will now rely more on mobile strategic
reserves and retaliatory deterrent power than
on local defensive power, important though that
will continue to be. 1t is a concept that makes
possible, among other things, substantial cuts
in the size of our ground forces-a fact demon
strated by the Presidents recent announcement
that two of our Army divisions will be with
drawn soon" from Korea. OF course, enter
prises like the North Atlantic Treaty Organi-
zation and the yet-to-be-ratifled European
Defense Community Treaty are as imperative
as ever, but our revised policy very definitely
modifies past inter allied tactics and strategy
in most promising way as far as both cost and
security are concerned.
True, as Mr. Dulles has been at pains to
emphasize, there is nothing magical in all this,
nothing Offering foolproof guarantees Never
theless coupled with our Governments renewed
warnings to the Communists not to strike again
in Korea or move into places like Indo- China
and coupled also with signs that the Kremlin
may be bending bit to the will of the restive
Russian people, the "long-haup program of
rent to "such aggression as would mean general
war" If that happily proves to be the case
then it should be possible in due course-as 1t is
not possible today-for the world to build
peace in which the United States will feel safe
enough to divest ITSELF along with other nations,
of A-weapons and H-bombs. Meanwhile, as Mr..
Dulles has Indicated the fundamental law OF
self-preservation demands that we keep our
selves massively armed with them.