The people's voice., 1957-12-13
Who Speaks For Peuce?--

the prospects of negotiated settle
ments even while the rest go for
ward with the task of over-hauling
the Soviets? e40@
Negotiation of the kind Reston dis
cussed will not be easy--in fact it
may require more agonizing reap
praisal of ourselves than the soul
searching that followed the launch
ing of the Soviet Sputniks. Negotia-
tion based on historical facts will re-
quire that we have a hard look at the
policies we are pursuing. If we do
that, we are bound to discover that
some of these policies are not based
on historical facts, but rather on self
deceiving fairy tales. A glance at
American foreign policy in these ten
sion areas of the world may help to
illuminate this point.
THE FAR EAST
The historical fact is that the Com
munists are the government of China.
Yet we stubbornly pursue the policy
of believing that the Red regime will
collapse if we pretend it doesn't exist.
While we dream of this happy ending,
we continue to pour hundreds of mil
lions of dollars into the deteriorating
regime of aging Chang Kai-shek,
which we delude ourselves into think
ing is the government of China.
This is expensive day-dreaming-
expensive not only in dollars but in
the price we pay in prestige in the
Far East. For, as Walter Lippmann
has emphasized, it is because of our
fundamentally false estimate of the
realities of power in Eastern Asia that
"our prestige has been declining long
before the launching of Sputnik. Our
aims are no doubt righteous. But in
the hard and sour realities of world
politics, good intentions are not
policy
THE MIDDLE EAST
The historical facts are that the
Societ Union is the greatest power
bordering on the Middle East and that
for the first time in history she has
gained a foothold in this strategic
area, however much we may hate the
idea. Three times during this year
the Kremlin has proposed negotiation
of an agreement which would neutral
ize the area by embargoing the ship
ment of all arms by any power to
any nation in the Middle East. Three
times we refused because we felt that
to negotiate with the Soviets in the
Middle East would be to recognize
her as power in that region. The
fact that she is power there is clear
to even the most casual reader of
newspaper headlines, but our State
Department cherishes it's little fan
tastes even if the result is to play
into Soviet hands.
EUROPE
The historical fact is that Russia,
twice invaded by Germany in one
generation, fears a reunited Ger
many that would be military part
ner of the West in NATO. Every
Western statesman, however much he
might feel the Russians are wrong to
fear NATO, knows this Soviet fear is
And yet, year after year our
only proposal to the Kremlin is that
they permit our ally, West Germany,
to take over the Soviet satellite, East
Germany, and let the united nation
become the most powerful European
force in NATO. AS Lippman has said,
eff there is a single responsible and
informed man who, when he is off
the record, believes in this fairy tale,
[ have never met him." Nor has any
one else, yet this fairy tale is our
only policy toward Germany, the area
which is the key to settlement in
Europe.
These greatly telescoped inter-
pretations of the historical facts in
three decisive areas of the world
may suffer from oversimplification
but they are perilously close to the
truth. Our cozy notion that the
Soviets know nothing of science
and technology except what their
spies can steal from the West has
now been exposed for the myth it