UNITED STATES LEADERSHIP
AND THE NEWLY INDEPENDENT STATES

by

Henry A. Kissinger

No event of the post-war period has presented a greater challenge to American foreign policy than the emergence of so many new states hitherto under colonial rule. Diplomacy previously confined to a relatively few states dominating vast areas suddenly has become world-wide in scope. The United Nations now contains eighty-one members, a substantial minority of which were colonies barely a decade ago. The newly independent states, for better or worse, have become a major force in contemporary international relations.

The importance of the newly independent nations cannot be doubted. It is clearly to our interest that we identify ourselves with their aspirations, and that we seek to prevent an alignment of the white against the colored races. The consequences which flow from this proposition are much less obvious however. It is tempting to believe that we can develop one policy equally applicable to all newly independent states or that we will be able to disarm suspicion entirely by patience and goodwill.

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But the problem is more complex. The difficulties faced by newly independent states are as different as the histories which produced them. And their suspicions reflect not only past injustice but the sense of insecurity produced by disintegrating values and the search for a new orientation. United States policy towards the newly independent nations must therefore begin with an awareness of the nature of the revolution through which they are living.

The revolution taking place in the newly independent states can only be narrowly understood as a revolution against colonialism. In an important sense, it is a continuation of a revolution *started* by the colonial powers and carried on under their aegis. Moreover, there is an important difference between areas in which colonialism ruled directly and those in which it governed indirectly.

The remarkable aspect of colonialism from its beginning was the imposition of rule by a very small group of Europeans over vast populations. This was due not so much to the military superiority of the West - in many respects it is greater today than it was in the nineteenth century - as to the fact that the European powers displaced an existing ruling group in a society where the vast majority of the population neither enjoyed nor expected direct participation in government. The structure of government

[Y]

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in what is now the uncommitted third of the world had been feudal for
centuries, and in their first appearance the Europeans appeared as a
new governing group substituting itself for the existing one according
to a pattern which had characterized these areas for many generations.
The domination of vast territories by small groups of Europeans was
possible precisely because they were not considered as "foreign".
The notion of their foreignness was introduced in the first instance not
by the governed but by their rulers.

For the Europeans were not content with displacing a feudal
upper class. They brought with them the twin doctrines of rational
administration and popular participation in government, which in time
had inevitably to prove inconsistent with their continued domination.
The rationalizing of administration led to the consolidation of many
areas into viable units for the first time in their history; Indonesia,
for example, was nothing but a geographic expression until the Dutch
found it more efficient to unite the islands of the Indies under a single
administration. At the same time the colonial powers trained a group of
indigenous leaders in European universities where they absorbed the
doctrines of the right to self-government, human dignity and economic
advancement which had been the rallying points for European revolutionary
movements throughout the nineteenth century.

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The result was two sets of paradoxes: in its revolutionary aspect colonialism represents one of the greatest conversions of history. Almost without exception the leaders of the newly independent states are opposing their former masters in terms of values they have learned from them.

Their challenge to the West is not in terms of a different set of beliefs.

On the contrary, in the struggle for independence they were demanding that the West live up to its own principles. As the ideals of the British, French and American revolutions became diffused, partly through the very spread of colonialism, the seeds were sown for the destruction of colonialism itself. The more successful the teachings of the colonial powers, the more untenable their positions became. Thus the greater the participation of the indigenous population in their own government the more insistent grew their demands for independence, as is demonstrated by the difference between the British and the Portuguese colonies. What is taking place in the areas once under direct colonial rule is the second stage of the revolution started by the colonial powers. It is an attempt by the leaders of the newly independent states to spread among the masses of their people the values which they themselves acquired from the colonial power and which furnished the original impetus of the revolution.

This leads to the second paradox of the uncommitted third of the world: that the situation of areas which had been under direct colonial rule is more advantageous than that of countries where the colonial powers

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exercised their influence only indirectly. The territories governed directly, such as India, benefited through administrative consolidation and the overthrow of the old feudal order by an outside force. The countries controlled indirectly, such as most of those in the Middle East, suffered the demoralizing influence of foreign rule without a corresponding gain in the training of leadership groups or of administrative cohesion. On the contrary, while in areas governed directly boundaries were drawn with an eye to what constituted a viable unit, in other territories they were often drawn to ensure that the countries would *not* be viable. Thus the only reason for the existence of what came to be known as Transjordan was its need of a British subsidy over an indefinite period of time. For the most part, boundaries in the Middle East reflected neither a common history nor an economic or administrative necessity. They were drawn to guarantee weakness and rivalry.

In the areas once ruled indirectly, several revolutions are therefore going on concurrently: there is, to begin with, the revolt by a small Western-educated elite often against feudal rule. There is the quest for administrative, political and economic cohesiveness which in areas of direct rule is also the legacy of colonialism. There is, finally, the attempt to raise the level of economic welfare and of education of the masses. The revolutionary urgency is much greater and the problems

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more nearly insoluble in areas which had been governed indirectly than
in the countries which had been under direct rule, because in the latter
many of these upheavals were accomplished by the fiat of the colonial
power and over a long period of time. Therefore, while a legalistic
concept of sovereignty and aggression may be a stabilizing element
in Southeast Asia, it invites explosions in areas like the Middle East
because it works counter to the consolidation of inherently volatile
and economically unviable unity.

These paradoxes make the quest for popularity such a treacherous
course with respect to the newly independent states. For, while the
leadership groups have been trained in Western universities and have
on the whole accepted Western thinking, this very fact may limit the
degree to which they can identify themselves with the Western powers
politically. It is not so much that these leaders would be suspected
by their countrymen of collaboration with the former colonial rulers,
the motivation is more complex and more subtle. To sustain the dedication
and the suffering of the rebellion against the colonial powers, they had
to elaborate a distinction between themselves and their rulers which
they derived from a claim to superior morality or at least superior spirituality.
But, when the battle was won and independence finally achieved, many
leaders of newly independent countries have had to realize, at least

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subconsciously, that they were inwardly a good deal closer to their
former rulers than to their own countrymen. It may be too much to say
that they resent the West for having taught them patterns of thinking
which make them strangers to their own people. It is clear that they
require anti-colonialism as a means of achieving a sense of personal
identity. Precisely because they are inwardly so close to the West,
many of the leaders of the newly independent states cannot afford to
align themselves with it politically. If they must think in the categories
of their former colonial masters, they can at least refuse too close
political association.

In these terms, neutralism and anti-colonialism are not so much
a policy as a spiritual necessity. The constant reiteration of non-
alignment may be the means by which the leaders of newly independent
nations reassure themselves; they can be certain of their independence
only by acting it out every day and on every issue. This explains why the
most strident advocates of neutrality are often the very people who in
dress, bearing, and manner of thinking are closest to the West - indeed
who often have spent very little of their lives in their own countries.
Individuals with firm roots in their own tradition, on the other hand,
such as the Burmese leadership, for example, feel less compulsive about
proclaiming their independence daily and seem more prepared to act
jointly with the Western powers when their interests coincide.

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[N]

Therefore, too, the extent of anti-colonialism reflects less past suffering, than the difficulty of achieving a national consciousness. For, contrary to the nations of Western Europe from which they drew their ideal of nationhood, many of the newly independent states are based neither on a common language nor on a common culture. Their only common experience is the former colonial rule. Their leaders require anti-colonialism to achieve not only a sense of personal but also of national identity. The collection of islands called Indonesia is meaningful only in terms of history of Dutch rule; its frontiers follow precisely the frontiers of empire and so does its national consciousness. Because West New Guinea was part of the Dutch East Indies, Indonesia claims West New Guinea, which is inhabited by people as different from the Polynesian stock of Indonesia as the Dutch themselves. It does not covet Malaya, although racially and linguistically it is much closer, because no common experience connects it to Malaya. Conversely, Malaya has no desire to join its cultural brethren in Indonesia, but will become a state within the boundaries of former British colonial rule. Therefore, finally, it is futile to seek to substitute a concept of Soviet colonialism for the current concept identified with the West. The leaders of the uncommitted nations may condemn such Soviet actions as the repression of the Hungarian revolt. They may dislike Soviet control of the satellite orbit. But they will not be prepared to consider it as the

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same phenomenon which causes their own frustrations. Until they develop
a stronger sense of personal identity and until their nations can develop
purposes not drawn from the struggle for independence, they will require
anti-colonialism, and it must have an anti-Western connotation. For
beyond anti-colonialism lies psychological chaos.

In the uncommitted areas, popularity is an unattainable goal.
To seek to gear our policy to an inquiry into what people desire may
merely force the newly independent states to dissociate themselves from
us in order to demonstrate their independence. It would not be the
least paradox of the contemporary situation if we drove the newly inde-
pendent states toward the Soviet bloc by a too ardent embrace. On
the other hand, we should be able to utilize the combination of spiritual
kinship and political nonalignment for acts of leadership. For, whatever
their protestations, the leaders of almost every newly independent state,
particularly in areas which had been under direct colonial rule, are
spiritual heirs of the West at least to some extent. The very fact that
India considered it a great achievement to obtain Soviet acquiescence to
its five principles of coexistence indicates that its assessment of the
real threat to peace is not so very different from ours. For no attempt was
made to ask for the agreement of the former colonial powers or of the
United States, so often depicted in Asian folklore as imperialist and eager

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to restore colonial rule. It was *obviously* self-evident to India that
relations between it and the United States were so firmly based on the
principle of peaceful coexistence that no explicit reiteration was
necessary.

If then, we are prepared to exercise leadership, we may be able
to induce many of the newly independent nations to travel in a direction
to which they incline, if always a few steps behind us. They will not
surrender their nonalignment, but they may be willing to act in the
pursuance of common interests provided we are prepared to chart the
road and provided we tolerate a measure of dissociation. In the uncommitted
nations popularity may be less important than respect.

In a situation in which old forms and values are in dramatic
and often violent flux, independent and sometimes unilateral United
States action may paradoxically be the best means of achieving a common
purpose. For what else is leadership except the willingness to stand
alone? The price of our power and greater domestic stability is leader-
ship. The failure to exercise it will not result in a consensus of humanity;
it will lead to the creation of a vacuum.

by

Henry A. Kissinger

The importance of the newly independent nations cannot be doubted. It is clearly to our interest that we identify ourselves with their aspirations and that we seek to prevent an alignment of the white against the colored races. The consequences which flow from this proposition are much less obvious however. It is tempting to believe that we can develop one policy equally applicable to all newly independent states or that we will be able to disarm suspicion entirely by patience and goodwill.

- 2 -

The revolution taking place in the newly independent states can only be narrowly understood as a revolution against colonialism. In an important sense, it is a continuation of a revolution started by the colonial powers and carried on under their aegis. Moreover, there is an important difference between areas in which colonialism ruled directly and those in which it governed indirectly.

-3-

- 4 -

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exercised their influence only indirectly. The territories governed directly, such as India, benefited through administrative consolidation and the overthrow of the old feudal order by an outside force. The countries controlled indirectly, such as most of those in the Middle East, suffered the demoralizing influence of foreign rule without a corresponding gain in the training of leadership groups or of administrative cohesion. On the contrary, while in areas governed directly boundaries were drawn with an eye to what constituted a viable unit, in other territories they were often drawn to ensure that the countries would not be viable. Thus the only reason for the existence of what came to be known as Transjordan was its need of a British subsidy over an indefinite period of time. For the most part, boundaries in the Middle East reflected neither a common history nor an economic or administrative necessity. They were drawn to guarantee weakness and rivalry.

- 6 -

These paradoxes make the quest for popularity such a treacherous
course with respect to the newly independent states. For, while the
leadership groups have been trained in Western universities and have
on the whole accepted Western thinking, this very fact may limit the
degree to which they can identify themselves with the Western powers
politically. It is not so much that these leaders would be suspected
by their countrymen of collaboration with the former colonial rulers;
the motivation is more complex and more subtle. To sustain the dedication
and the suffering of the rebellion against the colonial powers, they had
to elaborate a distinction between themselves and their rulers which
they derived from a claim to superior morality or at least superior spirituality.
But, when the battle was won and independence finally achieved, many
leaders of newly independent countries have had to realize, at least

-7-

- 8 -

- 9 -

[N]

- 10 -

to restore colonial rule. It was obviously self-evident to India that
relations between it and the United States were so firmly based on the
principle of peaceful coexistence that no explicit reiteration was
necessary.

MR. HENRY A. KISSINGER

May 27, 1957

AN OPEN LETTER

TO THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS AND ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEES

Dear Sir:

Time is running out. Opportunities will not wait forever.

I, Lionel Weiser, petition you, sir, as my foreign policy representative in our democratic government, to redress my grievances on that subject. I hope you will give these serious charges your worthy consideration. I write it in four parts: (1) outline, (2) my conclusions, (3) summary and references, and (4) detailed proofs. Please tell me if this is fair and if you agree or disagree.

The foreign policy, the character, the prestige, the PICTURE of America and Americans to the world is identified with our Secretary of State. More so with John Foster Dulles because of his trips, his personal handling of negotiations, conferences and decisions, and because of his articulateness.

The picture that Mr. Dulles and the State Department present to me in their actions and words follows. Some of my statements are directed at Mr. Dulles who I hold to be synonymous with our State Department and responsible for its actions and words.

THE PICTURE:

A. The LEGALISTIC MIND of fine-line distinction and loophole

B. The HALF-TRUTH

C. The LACK OF FORESIGHT

D. The PEACEFUL OPPORTUNITIES MISSED

E. MISCELLANEOUS EVALUATION by foreign policy analysts.

MY CONCLUSIONS:

After this picture has been duly documented, I conclude:

1. The administration only gets us out of troubles it helped to create and could have prevented, i. e. Suez Canal, some Arab-Israel conflicts.

2

2. Our methods in foreign affairs are similar to the Russians'. We seem to be playing the same power and strength game the same way. (a) We are jockeying for position and not for world peace, i. e. Brinkmanship, loans, and bribes (grants) (b) Our State Department is autocratic. The secretary knows best. Dulles uses the Department to get him facts to supplement his own knowledge, to implement and to justify his decisions. Dulles cloaks U. S. actions with his own security classifications. He leaks information to flattering writers. (c) We are not getting closer to world peace; the cold war tensions and the mobilization of men, money and resources are still with us.

3. Mr. Dulles's effectiveness in international relations is now very, very low. (a) His statements are all suspect - of ulterior motives and half-truths - all, by his own admission, i. e. the Brinkmanship article in Life magazine, January 1956; his biography by John Robinson Beal published by Harper & Brothers, April 1957. (b) His ideas and techniques of speech, negotiation, and thinking were formed in the 1910s, '20s, '30s and are not acceptable today. Some of his habits of thinking were formed in close contact with his grandfather (Secretary of State, 1892) and are further outdated as they apply to a totally different diplomatic climate. You know, sir, the great "advances" in thinking in the '40s and '50s.

## MY MESSAGE:

In my opinion in the light of the above and its later proofs:

1. The U. S. deserves more and must demand more of its State Department. (a) To insure that the sacrifices of World War I, World War II and the Korean War were not in vain. (b) To live up to our heritage and advance the steadfast principles we championed in the past. (c) Because of the danger of a third world war.

2. Personally, I deserve a State Department and Secretary of State that I don't have to spend all my time keeping tabs on, like a "Dennis the Menace," and can get on with my life and the pursuit of my happiness. I deserve a foreign policy I can be proud of.

3

3. I call on you as my foreign policy representative to vigorously pursue your inquiry into our Mid-East policy, to urgently fill the "vacuum" in the U.S. for complete information and painful evaluation. You must make known your "advice and consent," and withdraw your "consent" as the case may be. Lack of the complete truth, your willingness to settle for the half-truth – the simple, easy-to-believe, self-enhancing partial truths – will gradually destroy our spiritual values. It may lower them to the level of an Arab mob at the mercy of their merciless manipulators (their Public Relations experts).

4. Reaction must be forced to give way to enlightenment. Laissez faire and the isolationists gave way to socio-economic reforms and to responsible Modern Republicans. Education was freed from the straitjacket of the fixed ideas of the past in the Scopes monkey trials, 1925, and dramatically portrayed in "Inherit the Wind." So, too, the foreign policy and its formulators must be exposed and urgently forced to give way to responsive, responsible, and enlightened democracy or we may Inherit the Wind.

## SUMMARY

A. THE LEGALISTIC MIND of John F. Dulles and the State Department is one of fine-line distinctions and legalistic loopholes. (1) Senator Dulles in 1949, in a debate on the NATO treaty, for the collective defense of Europe, argued that intention and purpose does not imply or morally necessitate its implementation. (2) Bipartisan foreign policy was good for Mr. Dulles from 1944-52, so it was in the public interest. In the 1952 election it was not good, so he savagely attacked our foreign policy (his, too). In 1954 bipartisanship was again advocated but in 1956, another election year, he claimed discussion of foreign policy (his) was not in the public interest. (3) Other incidents in Mr. Dulles' early life. Also see half-truths.

B. THE HALF-TRUTH is good but the whole truth would not be as easy to swallow. Part of the apple may be rotten. (1) Present the best case to befriend (ally) each country separately and hope they do not compare notes to see who got more for less. (2) Trouble? I'll take care of it. Don't give it another

[L.C.]

## Summary

4

thought. (3) Egypt was armed by Russia. When Israel requested defensive arms in 1956 Dulles declared it would only lead to an arms race. (4) The Aswan Dam, an "ill-advised" gambit of appeasement and insult, is still only partially exposed. Were we duped by Nasser's return gambit?

### C. LACK OF FORESIGHT and failure to anticipate the impact of events is a serious inadequacy of our State Department. (1) The Suez Canal seizure was a big surprise. We supplied the alibi. (2) Egypt's arming to the teeth and her hate and destructive propaganda; Israel's desperate position by our refusal to sell her arms--made a defensive war inevitable for many long months. Vigorous pressure for settlement of the dispute, instead of platitudes of empty warnings, may have brought less negative results.

### D. GOLDEN OPPORTUNITIES FOR PEACE knocked on deaf ears.
(1) In the canal seizure we stood idly by as Egypt destroyed the sanctity of law and International Treaty. (2) In the canal negotiations that followed we mediated the dispute, short of war, boycott, money and unfriendly acts. (3) In the Hungarian Revolution an attractive face-saving offer to match any plan of Russian troop withdrawal in Eastern Europe with our own withdrawal in Western Europe might have made compromise negotiations possible and Hungary might have avoided the blood bath. Maybe the world would have seen the beginning of the real peace.

### E. MISCELLANEOUS EVALUATION STATEMENTS quoted from James Reston, Eric Bellquist, Henry A. Kissinger, John Osborne, etc.

THE ABOVE SUMMARY OF THE PROOFS IS ALSO A TABLE OF CONTENTS. . . . IN ALL FAIRNESS, THE COMPLETE PROOFS THAT FOLLOW SHOULD BE READ.

(For References See Page 16)

A prophetic warning in *Life* magazine January 30, 1956, by Henry R. Luce, editor-in-chief, "Let us hope that even at this late date Dulles and Eden will think of something to do there /the Middle East/ besides warn us of war."

May 27, 1957

A. THE LEGALISTIC MIND

5

The legalistic mind of John Foster Dulles and the State Department is one of fine-line distinctions, splitting hairs, legalistic loopholes and strategic inconsistencies (classified by some as hypocrisy).

1. **NATO DEBATE:** If you recall, Senator Dulles, appointed by Governor Dewey on July 12, 1949, made his maiden speech in the Senate on the North Atlantic Treaty. He was familiar with the negotiations and details of the treaty through his previous job as a consultant for the State Department. In answer to a question by the late Senator Taft that if this treaty, with its stated purpose for the collective defense of Europe, is accepted, there would be a moral and legal right (commitment) for U. S. to contribute arms for Europe. Dulles said "No" but later he admitted that he knew the administration planned to ask for such authorization immediately after the treaty was passed. He further argued, in the Senate, that military assistance did not necessarily mean arms or a European force in being. The best military assistance U. S. could give France is, if we had A-bombs ready in U.S. or a base in France. Mr. Beal, in his biography on John Dulles, comments "that it was typical of a mental agility permissible in technical law but not acceptable on public questions."

2. **BIPARTISANSHIP:** Mr. Dulles was a staunch supporter of bipartisan foreign policy, at convenient times. From 1945-52 Dulles, as a State Department consultant, went to international foreign ministers' meetings, served as U. S. delegate to the U. N. before and after the Korean War, and worked on the peace treaty with Japan. In his book, "War and Peace," 1950, Dulles proclaimed: "It is necessary to seek help of the best qualified without regard to party affiliation.

Dulles worked on formulating U. S. bipartisan foreign policy up to the 1952 election campaign. He resigned, and he then denounced this same policy he helped formulate. Dulles wrote in the Republican Party election platform, "The administration has squandered the unprecedented power and prestige which were ours at the close of World War II . . . . We charge that the leaders of the administration lost the peace so dearly earned by World War II . . . . They /the Democratic administration/ abandoned friendly nations . . . to fend for themselves against Communist aggression which soon swallowed them up . . . .

The Legalistic Mind

6

"With foresight, the Korean War would never have happened." (Korea became the Truman-Acheson War).

Dulles said at the time he was merely stating the best case against the Democratic Party, but as an individual he could not subscribe to some of these statements. (A beautiful loophole if one wilfully forgets that Mr. Dulles was hired as a State Dept. consultant for the sole purpose of having a bipartisan foreign policy.) This display of legalistic acrobatics caused a reporter to ask, "When is Dulles, Dulles?" Needless to say, bipartisanship did not recover from this blow until the Democrats gained control of Congress in the 1954 election.

Early in the election year of 1956, Mr. Dulles claimed foreign policy should be kept out of politics and campaigns. "It will greatly increase the risk of war if political debate on foreign policy caused doubt overseas of U.S. determination to fulfill its commitments. . . entirely proper and appropriate to have constructive discussion short of this danger." Dulles meant to exclude completely the Mid-East and Far East unsolved and half-solved conflicts from political debate under his own security classification. As late as April 27, 1956, he still demanded only "constructive discussion," which might rule out valid criticism and eternally put off embarrassing questions. Dulles' bluster, security classification and legalistic mind managed to cloak our foreign policy in a protective black-out, which it still has not thrown off. The cloak became a small curtain.

### 3. OTHER INCIDENTS:
The U.S. reparations brief at Versailles, written by Mr. Dulles in January, 1918, claimed Belgium, and only Belgium, was entitled to full damage claims because only her neutrality was guaranteed by international treaty, and subsequently violated. The other nations' reparations should be limited to claims for civilian damage. This fine legalistic line implies, rightly for that time (today ideas and methods have changed, but not so Mr. Dulles) that each nation had the right to make war and is only responsible for accidental civilian damage.

This example is only a background to show the early development of Mr. Dulles' legalistic thinking experiences. I could also include his theory of

[LC]

The Half-Truth

7

judgment, written in Princeton as an undergraduate in 1908, that part of one statement implies the other part, and so it can be left unsaid. Also the experiences he had with early twentieth century diplomats and international businessmen who practiced the art of 'fine print' and 'fine talk' to mask the intentions of their selfish interests and scheming strategy. This art of duplicity is refined by the legal discipline and the precision of language into a skill, where one can write and say just enough to suggest the intention, but always withholding much of the substance. You start to eat a meal with two appetizers, and find that there is nothing else but ... excuses... promises... conditions. This art leads us into the next picture, the half-truth.

## B. THE HALF-TRUTH

The U. S. law demands of a witness to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The lawyer is free to say anything, and is valued as he can imply and manipulate testimony. An esteemed jurist said, "A half-truth is a lie -- the worst kind." A decent respect for mankind (not only its official opinions) demands more than half-truths.

1. Mr. Dulles presents the best case to each country separately and hopes they do not compare notes. Mr. Joseph Harsch, in Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1956, wrote: "A lawyer does not have to believe the partisan case he presents for his client. Nor is consistency expected... the quality which made him (Dulles) so successful in law was his ability to make a case for a client. This technique... has involved him in instances of embarrassing inconsistency." From the same article... "in Pakistan, March 1955, Dulles argued to SEATO members that it pays to be an ally of the U. S., citing facts and figures from the U. S. Treasury... Seven days later, he was in non-allied Indonesia, saying, 'There is no connection whatsoever' between our financial aid and membership in a military security pact with U. S., citing aid given India and Ceylon."

Another example in the same article... "The new Soviet diplomacy had for many months been running rings around western diplomacy. Soviet

The Half-Truth

8

arms had gone to Egypt; Soviet 'trade' delegations were roving as far afield as
Latin America; Pakistan had agreed to send a trade mission to Moscow . . . Yet
Mr. Dulles asserted, 'at this moment they are having to revise their whole pro-
gram'. 'They (the U. S. S. R.) have failed.'" (He was referring to de-Stalinization.)
When questioned, Mr. Dulles said (after juggling some figures) "Soviet failure
was based on their position in 1948 and now." (Feb. 24, 1956) He ignored the
back-sliding of U. S. position for 3 years (now 5) under his direction.

2. Everything is fine; don't you worry yourself nohow; I'm busy taking care of it. This is Mr. Dulles' attitude to the American people, whose lives, happiness and resources are directly involved. In Foreign Affairs Magazine, Oct. 1956, Mr. Kissinger wrote, "The present administration has not helped matters with its pretense to normalcy and its penchant for happy endings." (Consider good news from Suez, Arab-Israel conflicts, foreign aid, draft, H-bomb fallout, press ban on Red China, etc.) Mr. Kissinger goes on to argue that "the American legalistic, empirical approach fails to deal with problems that need to be anticipated. It is set up only to handle actual problems as they begin to exist. . . . One can know from experience only when it is too late to act." (More under Lack of Foresight and Miscellaneous Evaluations.)

3. The Middle East arms race became a strange paradox of figures. Late in 1955 and in 1956, Israel was upset by the realities of the huge quantities of military supplies being delivered to Egypt, especially weapons which she could not match -- large tanks and fast jets. The official State Department answer to her plea to purchase defensive arms was, "No. But it is still under active consideration. . . . No! It will only start an arms race. Israel, with some 1,800,000 people, cannot expect to keep up with the arms of 40 millions of Arabs in the Mid-East area." This is a lot less than a half-truth, and what is worse, a lot of American newspapers accepted it as the whole truth. Even coupled with the whispered hush-hush reasons: of self-interest; that it would make us partial in the dispute, antagonize our Arab friends and might hurt our oil interests; it is still a half truth. We expediently closed our eyes and refused to remember what Lincoln said . . . "The world can never forget" . . . namely, our heritage and our pledge of (its) allegiance. We, the arsenal of

The Half-Truth

9

democracy so many times, in so many ways, were denying the right of self-defense to a small democratic republic in a desperate position of survival. We did nothing to neutralize the situation and were surprised a year later when the war broke out.
(More under Lack of Foresight.)

4. The Aswan Dam incident proves truth is stranger than fiction. On July 19, 1956, when the Egyptian Ambassador arrived to accept the U.S.' offer to help finance the Aswan Dam, Secretary Dulles abruptly and "insultingly" withdrew the offer. The State Department said the offer was contingent on Egypt's ability to concentrate its economic resources on the project . . . . Not feasible under present circumstances . . . . A heavy mortgage is imposed on future cotton crops by Egyptian-Soviet block arms-trade pact. Some facts on the negotiations:
(a) The Egyptian-Soviet bloc arms pact was signed in September 1955, and known publicly to a large extent. The generous offer of aid was extended officially on Dec. 16, 1955, in reply to request by the Egyptian government. (b) Negotiations on the Aswan Dam were carried on through the International Bank in Feb. 1956, and by June 21, 1956 it was favorably completed, pending formal acceptance of the initial grant (gift) agreement.

A little perspective will make the half-truth more complete. The whole idea was a faux pas and would have been political suicide in the election year 1956. We may have been misled by some statements from Egypt but it is a case of Arab appeasement. Egypt was a neutral, screaming against the Baghdad pact, and had just negotiated a large trade-arms pact with the Soviet bloc, with the usual technicians and political strings, i.e., recognition of Red China. Dulles claimed at the time that neutrality was close to immorality. Our friendly allies, the newly-committed independent nations, were beginning to make agonizing reappraisals as to the benefits and risks in taking sides. If a neutral and trading with both sides, One might get more help. Senator George, then Chairman of Foreign Relations Committee, on April 1956, said, "It (Aswan Dam) was ill-advised and inconsistent with U. S. policy." He was worried, partly about economic competition in cotton, but he probably considered the 1950 Tripartite declaration (if you recall, it stated that we allow arms into the Mid-East only for internal security, and our opposition to the use of force, or threat of force, to violate the armistice lines). He probably considered the State Department's

[L.C]

The Lack of Foresight

10

classification of the immoral neutral and the effect on our allies, especially France, and the non-committed nations. He probably could not see why U. S. had to give aid to a dictator, with delusions of grandeur and plans for Hitlerian aggrandizement. And so the Appropriations Committee passed a directive on July 16, 1956, against the use of Mutual Security funds without the committee's prior approval. Mr. Dulles then said he did not intend to use Mutual Security funds. It now appears that this ill-advised, inconsistent project was transformed, by Mr. Dulles, into a crafty gambit, with the grave chain of events that followed. We unwittingly supplied the 'Alibi' for Nasser to seize the Suez Canal. One can, of course, always say it could have been worse.

The Republican Party would have been held responsible by the voters in the '56 election, but the facts never got out straight. The Westerners would have had an extra political issue -- U. S. administration dead-set against public development of water resources in U. S. but favors bigger and better ones in Egypt.

The gambit, to cause Egypt to turn to Russia for economic aid and thereby call the Russians' bluff, might be considered "fatuous" in the light of history and a half-truth in the light of the facts at the time.

### C. THE LACK OF FORESIGHT

Lack of Foresight and Missing Our Golden Opportunities For Peace are the most serious inadequacies of the State Department and John Foster Dulles. The future comes out of the past. The seeds must be sown and grow before they are harvested. In knowing, evaluating and anticipating the impact of events on U. S. and other peoples, and the directions nations are pulling and being pushed is where our international guides, J. F. Dulles and the State Department, missed the boat or floundered in the fog. (All the more shameful, since he is an able sailor.)

1. Dulles overlooked the possibility that President (Dictator) Nasser would seize the Suez Canal. In 1954 he prevailed upon the English to withdraw their troops from the Canal on implicit faith. The last troops left in June 1956. According to claims attributed to him in his biography by Beal, Dulles

[LC]

The Lack of Foresight

11

premeditatedly and abruptly withdrew the financing of the Aswan Dam in the 11th hour of negotiation, with a shadow for a reason. This was done to call Egypt's bluff "to go to Russia and accept their aid deal." It may have been premeditated by Nasser with U. S. being duped into supplying the alibi. At any rate the Suez Canal was seized one week later. More in Section D.

2. As Israel's request for arms (1956) was treated with duplicity, so the Egypt-Israel dispute was treated without regard to the obvious and the inevitable. The Egypt-Israel Limited War of October 29, 1956, actually started a year before that and gradually developed. How long did Mr. Dulles expect a free people, the Israelis, could stand idly by and watch their neighbor shout their destruction and arm itself with weapons against which they had no defense? The blocking of the Suez Canal to even foreign ships carrying Israel cargoes was renewed on May 25, 1956, with the stopping of the cement-loaded Greek ship "Pannegia." It should have had some significance to Washington, D. C. The mighty military parade in Cairo June 20, 1956, with heavy tanks, jet airplanes and other motorized equipment, should have had some of the impact it had in Jerusalem, in the offices of our State Department.

Yet U. S. policy stood frozen in the smoke screen of the election campaign with such platitudes as "no arms race in the Middle East," and "no arms now for Israel." (The Arabs had more than they could use.) The State Department reminded Israel that arms was not the only deterrent to war -- and named the Tripartite declaration, the armistice agreements and the U. N. These actually, after time-consuming procedures, maintained only a shaky status quo. These were hardly any assurance, in the light of Egypt's arming to the teeth, to a country only 12 miles from the sea and minutes flying-time from potentially hostile military bases. Israel's desperate position, and U. S. "poker-faced" policy of "stand pat and see," made the limited war inevitable. The unexplained large quantities of military equipment captured in the Sinai desert add validity to Israel's claims of self-defense against an impending war.

[LC]

12

D. THE OPPORTUNITIES LOST

The Golden Opportunities for World Peace knocked in Washington, D. C., but nobody was home upstairs.

1. When Egypt seized the Suez Canal we had a duty to bravely and sincerely uphold the side of Law and demand that international treaties mean something . . . mean more than contracts of convenience and accommodation. If something was sacred, besides the gun in your ribs or the H-Bomb in the stockpile, the world could breathe easier.

2. In the meetings that followed the Suez Canal seizure, Mr. Dulles, acting as an "immoral neutral", tried to arbitrate the dispute, the insult and the breach of treaty as a dispute between Egypt and the owners and users of the Canal. Suffering from election-year jitters, Mr. Dulles avoided the agonizing test of putting words into action.

The words: On August 3, 1956, Dulles said, "Inadmissable . . . exploitation of the canal by one country for highly selfish purposes . . . . We assume the conference will succeed . . . if it fails, we have given no commitments at any time as to what the U. S. will do."

On August 16, 1956, opening the meeting, Dulles said, "What is required is a permanent operation of the Canal under an international system . . . the Canal should not be the instrument of policy of any nation or group of nations."

After Egypt rejected the conference proposal, Dulles suggested the Suez Canal Uses Association and a legalistic scheme to recover the rights in the treaty. On September 12, 1956, Dulles denied it was his plan. (Later in his biography it is freely admitted.) He said we supported it, but he denied a U. S. boycott, if the plan failed. He denied the U. S. would advance 500 million dollars in credits to implement a boycott, as the extra cost of not using the Canal.

In short, the U. S. would do anything that didn't cost any money; that is not remotely unfriendly to the Arab nations; that would not lead to military or economic action (boycott, dump cotton on the world market); and that would not spoil the pretense of normalcy, peace and prosperity at home.

[Lc]

The Opportunities Lost

13

The situation called for a leader, not a mediator -- not just talk of pacification but making no commitments. It demanded more than a cry of "wolf."

The Uses plan was received with mixed feelings and interpretations and was never tried. The dispute went to the U. N. Then the War and the consequences of the war. The opportunity for making a treaty mean something went down the drain. Today the Suez dispute, in a different perspective, calls for a face-saving mediator, and we rise to the occasion.

3. In the Hungarian revolt we had a right to use caution, but not to be helpless, as if caught with our pants down. A face-saving attractive offer to Russia to match any plan of withdrawal of Soviet troops in Eastern Europe, with our own withdrawal from Western Europe, might have made compromise negotiations possible and Hungary would have avoided a blood bath. Maybe then the world would have found a beginning to a road of peace. An offer at this strategic moment, couched in the right terms, would have had to be considered. Once publicly made, it would do more to stir the inner yearnings for freedom in the Captive Nations than all previous propaganda, including Mr. Dulles' oratory, and could never be rolled back.

The Hungarian Revolt was not, as Mr. Dulles would have us believe, a shot out of the blue. There were many incidents that led up to it which must have been known to the State Department through its Foreign Service.

E. MISCELLANEOUS EVALUATIONS

1. Mr. Dulles' Caricature: Eric Bellquist, in *Antioch Review*, Fall, 1956, wrote: "He (Dulles) thinks of self as a roving negotiator who represents the President's constitutional authority to conduct foreign affairs. He works out high problems by personal negotiation, then leaves the policies to be administered and operated in his absence by officials, who do not know at first hand what they are. A traveling Secretary of State is no substitute for a President and our career diplomatic corps." The same views are expressed by Mr. Walter Lippman in his column and Henry Wriston in *Foreign Affairs*, July 1956. Also, "The record of the administration in the field of foreign policy has been

[LC]

Miscellaneous Evaluations

14

modest. In the main it has adapted itself to politics, it could not change, and learned to take credit for policies it was merely continuing. This is not unimportant. . . Personal popularity of President. . . made possible acceptance of events that would certainly be hotly contested." i. e., ceding half of Korea and Vietnam to the Communists.

Henry A. Kissinger in *Foreign Affairs* of October 1956, wrote, "They (our leaders) often lack the background to cope with a developing political and strategic situation. Each problem dealt with on its own merits, a procedure which emphasizes the particular at the expense of the general (a comprehensive policy) and bogs down planning in a mass of detail. The absence of a conceptual framework makes it difficult to even identify our problems or to choose effectively among the purpose and interpretation. . . little doubt our foreign policy has reached an impasse, after several years of groping for a concept to deal with the transformation in the cold war from an effort to build defensive barriers to a contest for the allegiance of humanity. Emphasis on the military is the cause of our failure to develop a sense of common purpose. Popularity (in uncommitted areas) is a hopeless mirage. . . less important than respect."

2. The Dulles State Department: Mr. Osborne in *Fortune Magazine*, March 1957, in the meat of his article, states, "The operation (of the State Department) is based on the proposition that Mr. Dulles' background knowledge of world affairs, his comprehension of present problems, his judgment of what to do, are superior to the collective knowledge, comprehension of the State Department and its vast apparatus all over the world. . .

"Its (inside-department memoranda that reach Mr. Dulles) volume and content demonstrate that Mr. Dulles does utilize the department's knowledge, if only to supplement his own. . . Secretary has too much rather than too little to do with department operations." (He is involved in many unimportant and unnecessary problems, and he cannot delegate authority). "The officials in the political echelon just below him are generally on spot assignments, doing whatever Dulles has instructed them to do."

Miscellaneous Evaluations

15

Osborne concludes: "A strong policy, strongly directed, (personally policed) can be carried out." He finds "the department and foreign service are 'good enough.'"

Mr. James Reston in *The New York Sunday Times*, in his column, "Washington," of March 17, 1957, wrote, "The most serious problem in Washington today is the failure of the government to organize itself effectively to deal with . . . foreign affairs." He compared our State Department to what Harold Nicolson said of harrassed, over-worked men of Versailles . . . "such cumulative experience . . . . . . having acquired an aptitude for the superficial rather than the essential; for the expedient in performance than the awkward; for the improvised as an escape from the pondered."

Reston wrote, "Britain's muddling through was replaced by our muddling through."

Arthur Krock on the U. S. Press ban in Red China, April 25, 1957, wrote: "The 'Question,' as now defined by the Secretary of State, is the seventh or eighth version, each one differing in detail from the one stated before . . . . Considering how many times the State Department found it necessary to retreat from a position that became untenable and considering also the dialectical skill with which it always pretends it has done nothing of the sort, it is surprising that Secretary Dulles is finding it so difficult to resolve the question he stated."

* * *

If I may be permitted to get in a word of my own, I say, in all seriousness . . . the 'Washington Senators' need a new pitcher . . . if you have any respect for yourself, the public, the past and the future. I repeat what Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, said about the "Brink" article . . . . It's too close for me!

Address:
Lionel Weiser
P. O. Box 364
New York 1, NY

Boston 9, Massachusetts
2 Park Street
Houghton Millin Company
Mr. Craig Wylie

Secretary to Dr. Klaasinger
Robbie Holley,

With best wishes,

that you were able to change the biographical material.
first week in June. I know Dr. Klaasinger will be pleased
prizing it to his attention upon his return to the city the
to Dr. Klaasinger who is away on a brief holiday. I shall
This will acknowledge your kind letter of May 23
Dear Mr. Wylie:

May 23, 1927

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

2 PARK STREET BOSTON 7

May 22, 1957

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
22 West 55th Street
New York 20, New York

Dear Henry:

Many thanks for the reprint of your
**Foreign Affairs** article. I have not had a
moment to look at it yet but I shall take it
home tonight.

It turned out that there was sufficient
time to change the biographical material, so
that is O.K.

CW/ac

Henry A. Kissinger

June 5, 1957

Mailing List "Controls, Inspection and Limited War" The Reporter

Professor Louis Hartz
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Harvard University
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Carnegie Corporation
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Department of Government
Harvard University
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Littauer Center
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President
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Radiation Laboratories
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Oving House
Aylsbury, Buckinghamshire
England

Dr. Robert Strausz-Hupš
Foreign Policy Research Institute
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia 4, Pa.

June 12, 1957

Dear Mr. Horton:

I have looked over the issue of THE REPORTER with my article and on the whole I am well satisfied with the editorial changes which you made. There is, however, a major distortion on the last page in the paragraph where I mention the types of limitations which might be proposed. If you recall I had proposed that bases of the strategic airforce and cities located maintain 500 miles behind the combat zone be immune from attack. In your text this emerged as 50 miles. It is quite clear that 50 miles in a nuclear war is no distance at all, and that no sane combatant would locate the bases of his strategic airforce this close to a battle zone. I do not know whether you ever make corrections but if it were possible to indicate what I really had in mind I would tremendously appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Mr. Philip Horton
THE REPORTER
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New York, New York

THE REPORTER

THE MAGAZINE OF FACTS AND IDEAS

MAX ASCOLI, Editor and Publisher

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VOLUME 16, NO. 12

JUNE 13, 1957

THE REPORTER'S NOTES 1

The Risks of Disarmament

EUROPE'S FEAR OF A NEW YALTA-AN EDITORIAL Max Ascoli 8

THE ATOMIC SQUEEZE ON EUROPE Alastair Buchan 9

CONTROLS, INSPECTION, AND LIMITED WAR Henry A. Kissinger 14

A CHANGE IN THE AIR Eric Sevareid 19

At Home & Abroad

THE REFORM THAT REFORMED ITSELF William H. Hessler 20

KHRUSHCHEV CHARTS A NEW ECONOMIC COURSE Isaac Deutscher 25

INDONESIA: GROWING OPPOSITION
TO SUKARNO'S 'GOTONG ROJONG' Gordon Walker 28

Views & Reviews

A FIELD GUIDE TO THE SPORTS CARS Tom Armstrong 33

LITTLE THEATERS BECOME BIG BUSINESS Gerald Weales 36

'WHERE DID SHE NOT PRY, THIS GREAT BEE?' Hortense Calisher 40

THE VERY LAST HURRAH John Kenneth Galbraith 43

THE PRIME MINISTER'S MILITARY NURSEMAID Al Newman 44

SECOND LOOKS AT THE SUEZ ADVENTURE Sander Vanocur 45

AUNT DOT'S WHITE CAMEL Sidney Alexander 46

IN DEFENSE OF LOVE Marya Mannes 48

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Manuscripts or artwork submitted to The Reporter should be accompanied by addressed envelope and return postage. The publisher assumes no responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts or artwork.

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EDITORIAL

MAX ASCOLI

Europe's Fear of a New Yalta

IT IS a rather novel experience for a traveler on the old Continent to find thoughtful, responsible people haunted by the prospect not of war but of peace—a peace reached somewhat prematurely by the United States and Soviet Russia under the guise of a disarmament agreement, at great cost to the national aspirations and prestige of the western European countries. Over there, it's called a new Yalta.

You meet old friends who have greeted you year after year with more or less the same talk: Why aren't you Americans more reasonable toward the Russians? Some of the things that worry the Russians the most are the same that keep you worried, like the growing power of China or the new nationalisms on the rampage. The Kremlin will go on building up the industrial potential of China and fomenting nationalisms as long as America fails to recognize that Russia has become a fellow "have" nation. Your obstinacy gives the Kremlin the leadership of the "have-nots" and threatens our peace.

So went the talk of yore. In the spring of 1957 the American traveler is not spared long, excited tirades on U.S.-Russian relations. But now what's wrong is that the representatives of the American and Russian governments at the disarmament negotiations are getting too chummy—and there is no use protesting or trying to stop the long tale, delivered in chapter and verse. They know it for a fact, and it didn't start at the current London meetings either. Whenever Stassen, or for that matter Lodge back in New York, sees his Russian opposite number, they go into a huddle and from then on there is no way of knowing what they have talked about.

The outcome of this Soviet-American intimacy is only too clear: Russia doesn't want China to become a great power with atomic weapons of its own; the U.S. doesn't like to have its major European allies exposed to the temptation of possessing A- or H-weapons of their own. Britain got in just under the wire and may sometime break edgewise into the exclusive colloquy of the two giants. It's Yalta all over again—a Yalta for keeps.

SINCE THE END of the war, the fear has lingered among statesmen and publicists abroad that the conflict between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. could end in a partition of the world between the two. That fear now affects a far larger number of people. What goes on here? ask those who thought that a bridge was needed between the two superpowers and were kindly available to build bridges or play the honest broker's role. The avowed or crypto-neutralists who have been legion in Europe for years do not cherish the prospect of their nations becoming somehow neutralized, with no longer very much of a say in international affairs.

"We don't want to be liberated by America after the Soviet armies have conquered us," you used to hear. Now even that fear seems to be not so great as the fear that European nations will be reduced to a degree of influence commensurate with their power. The short cut to power lies in the possession of atomic weapons. Admiral Radford has found an unsuspected number of disciples.

In fact, the same American leaders who just a short time ago used to give Europe the jitters seem to have acquired a sudden popularity

in Europe. Admiral Radford or Senator Knowland can be counted on to stand in the way of a Soviet-American agreement, but Eisenhower's willingness to go halfway toward the Russians and reach with them some measure of limited reciprocal disarmament is seen with great apprehension. And, of course, Dulles isn't trusted—but that's scarcely news.

Modern Republicanism, or the equivalent thereof, is no more popular in Europe than it is over here. The causes or the occasions may be different, but the trend is very much the same: budget cutting (particularly on military expenditures), reliance on nuclear weapons, and a standpat, uncompromising attitude toward Soviet Russia. The trend is to the Right. Italy, after so much talk of an opening to the Left, has given itself a cabinet that can stay in power only if it offers an opening to the Right. It would not be surprising if the French cabinet crisis ends the same way.

EVERYTHING is like here at home, only worse, sometimes much, much worse: To this conclusion the American traveler is forced more and more frequently. It would be unfair oversimplification to attribute all that's wrong with the diplomatic and strategic policies of Europe to the vacillating nature of our diplomatic leadership. It's a fact, however, that the western community truly exists and that the example of the strongest nation greatly contributes to set the tone for the others. It is as if every European nation had a lame-duck administration—like ours.

Among our allies we may have a near monopoly on ultimate weapons, but we have no monopoly on independence and self-absorption.

8

THE REPORTER

[LC]

# Controls, Inspection, And Limited War

HENRY A. KISSINGER

ONE REMARKABLE ASPECT of the nuclear age has been a penchant for absolute solutions. In strategy it has led to our theory of deterrence, which identifies deterrence with the threat of maximum destruction. In diplomacy its symptom has been the quest for total peace, of which our approach to disarmament negotiations is the most notable example.

During the same month that Great Britain pressed the implications of our own strategic doctrine to their most rigorous conclusion, the major powers were negotiating about disarmament as if the perils of the nuclear age could be avoided at one fell swoop by a diplomatic instrument. From Korea to Indo-China to the Middle East, the real security problem has been the Communists' strategy of ambiguity. This Communist strategy, which is designed to multiply the hesitations and doubts

of opponents, graduates its challenges to a point well below that likely to provoke a final showdown.

By leaving no middle ground between total war and total peace, both our strategic doctrine and our approach to disarmament prevent the attainment of a less dramatic but perhaps more realizable objective: the establishment of a military and diplomatic framework which would cause war, if it does come, to take less absolute forms and which might spare humanity at least the worst horrors of nuclear conflict.

As things now stand, the major powers could conceivably be drawn into a war entirely against their wishes. The conflict over the Suez Canal was hardly foreseen by the western powers and perhaps not even by the Soviet Union. And the Hungarian revolution came as a rude shock to the Kremlin. Both upheavals resulted in military action

that prevailing strategic doctrines might easily have spread to an all-out war. Similar Soviet moves in East Germany or Poland would be fraught with even more danger.

The absence of any generally understood limits to war undermines the psychological framework of resistance to Communist moves. Where war is considered tantamount to national suicide, surrender may appear the lesser of two evils. A gap is thus opened between the quest for total peace and the military doctrine of total war—a gap in which the Soviet leadership can operate with relative impunity. Both strategy and diplomacy should therefore seek to pose less absolute alternatives; the former by developing a doctrine for limited war, the latter by using disarmament negotiations to obtain an understanding of the doctrine by other powers.

## The Race Is in the Laboratories

The always difficult task of disarmament negotiations is made nearly impossible by the instability and complexity of weapons technology, which has made it difficult to agree either on reduction of forces or on control over the development of new weapons.

A reduction of forces is difficult to negotiate because it seeks to com-

14

THE REPORTER

unreliable, now show well over fifty per cent of the electorate opposed to giving atomic weapons to the German forces, compared with thirty-three per cent in favor. And since the Social Democrats base all their military thinking on the hypothesis of a reunified Germany outside NATO, of a Europe in which the political tensions have been resolved, they feel free to oppose the use of atomic weapons without being called upon to justify the military implications of their policy.

ONE IRONIC aspect of this situation is that the U.S. forces in Germany, which have hitherto been proud to display their strength in tactical atomic weapons, are now anxious to draw a veil over their existence. Recently I was invited to visit a U.S. Corporal battalion in southern Germany. After a long journey, I was met by a flustered Army press officer who had just received a message from Washington that no more journalists were to be shown around. (Even so, I did manage to see some of the sights.)

Nor did the NATO meeting in Bonn do anything to strengthen Adenauer's position, though the holding of it in that curious uncomfortable transient camp of a capital—where the styles of Charles Addams and Conrad Hilton fight for architectural predominance—was largely designed to do just that. The final communiqué to which the German foreign minister, Heinrich von Brentano, had perforce to put his name implied very clearly that tactical nuclear weapons were essential to the alliance. Worse still, Lord Ismay, the retiring secretary-general, publicly reminded the press that in the last instance the decision of whether to accept these weapons was a matter for governments to make, not the NATO Council, thus rebutting the attempt of Brentano and Adenauer to pass the buck to NATO.

## Tiptoe Tactics?

This has been one of the most unsettled springs in the long memory of Europe's farmers, with snow lying thick beneath the blossoming cherry trees in May. And the same is true of the political climate. For while the thunderhead of the atomic debate rolls up and down the Rhine, the

shadow of a larger cloud is spread across Germany, namely the possibility that the two superpowers have succeeded in alarming each other about the future implications of nuclear warfare to a point where they will agree to some form of limited disarmament or inspection system in Europe without settling the future of a divided Germany.

Harold Macmillan recently spent two days in Bonn reassuring Adenauer that, in his own phrase, Britain was not "tiptoeing out of Europe," and that suggestions for an agreement with the Russians for the "neutralization" of Germany, now being aired by Hugh Gaitskell and other Opposition speakers, formed no part of his official policy. Then President Eisenhower's statement at his press conference of May 8 that the United States would study "very sympathetically" plans for disarmament test areas in East and West Germany sent Bonn ten feet off the ground again. As with the furor over the purported Radford plan for withdrawing American troops last summer, no amount of subsequent soothing on the part of lesser American officials can succeed in allaying the fear that America's interests are no longer identical with Germany's. The nightmare that the United States and Britain, mesmerized by their own atomic arms race with the Russians, may conclude an agreement that leaves Soviet conventional forces in Europe as strong as ever haunts not only Germany but the whole of western Europe.

EVERY great European question is for the moment in flux. Will the NATO plan for a strong shield ever be completed? Is a limited disarmament agreement near fruition, as the ever-buoyant Harold Stassen insists it is? Will Germany emerge from the elections neutralist under the Social Democrats? If not, will its present deep distrust in the consistency of Washington and its even deeper distrust of the intentions of London make it decide to assume the leadership of a new military bloc in western Europe? France is within inches of deciding to become the fourth nuclear power, and will be swayed one way or another by the course of this year's disarmament negotiations. In consequence, the thoughts of more and more German officials are turning to the desirability of merging France's considerable ingenuity in the design of new weapons with their own fast-growing industrial power.

As a consequence of America's increasing detachment from the problems of its European allies and of Britain's threat to follow America into a position of atomic isolationism, the European members of NATO feel thrown back upon their own resources.

What they can do about it remains unclear even in their own minds. But they are not going to be second-class members of the club, providing the foot soldiers and the atomic battlefields while the Anglo-Saxon powers contribute gamma rays and strontium 90.

June 13, 1957

13

pare incommensurables. What, for example, is the relation between the Soviet ability to overrun Eurasia and American air and sea power? If the United States weakened its Strategic Air Command, it would be years before it could be reconstituted. If the Soviets should reduce their ground forces, they could be reassembled in a matter of weeks.

Even if a scale for the comparison of different weapons systems could be negotiated, that would still not remove the real security problem: the rapid rate of change of modern technology. Disarmament plans of the past were based on the assumption of a relatively stable weapons technology. Once the proposed reduction of forces was implemented, it was believed that strategic relationship would remain constant. But under present conditions the real armaments race is in the laboratories. No reduction of forces, however scrupulously carried out, could protect against a technological breakthrough. Even if strategic striking forces were kept at fixed levels and rigidly controlled, an advance in air defense sufficient to contain the opposing retaliatory force would destroy the strategic balance.

THE RATE of technological change has outstripped the pace of diplomatic negotiations. Because stockpiles have usually accumulated before negotiators could even agree on the nature of their problem, efforts to control the development of new weapons have proved futile. Since each scientific advance opens the way to innumerable others, it is next to impossible to define a meaningful point at which to "cut off" weapons development. At the beginning of the atomic age, a strict inspection system might have succeeded in stopping the elaboration of nuclear weapons. By 1952, it might still have been possible to control the development of thermonuclear weapons, albeit with great difficulty. The hydrogen bomb developed so naturally out of research and production of nuclear weapons that a foolproof inspection system would have been infinitely complicated. In any case, by 1957 the production of thermonuclear devices has so far outstripped any possible control machinery that the emphasis of disarmament nego-

tiations has turned from eliminating stockpiles of thermonuclear weapons to methods of restraining their use.

Moreover, once a weapon is developed, the next stage is to elaborate its applications until ever-wider realms of strategy become dependent on it. A nation may be willing to forgo the offensive use of nuclear weapons, but it will be most reluctant to give up defensive applications, such as anti-aircraft or anti-missile weapons.

In short, it is possible to keep weapons from being stockpiled only when they are brand-new—when their implications are least understood. By the time their potential is realized, there is no possibility of preventing them from being added to existing arsenals. Thus if missiles are to be controlled, it will have to be within the next two years, before they go into mass production.

## How Valuable Is Inspection?

The difficulty of developing meaningful control machinery to end the production and development of new

also remove some of the urgency from international relationships. This was the reasoning behind President Eisenhower's proposal at the Geneva "Summit" Conference in the summer of 1955 to exchange military blueprints with the Soviet Union and for the two powers to permit aerial reconnaissance of each other's territories. The principle that inspection may prevent surprise attack has been accepted in the Soviet counterproposal for stationing ground observers at strategic points in the territory of the other nation, and in the recent offer to open part of Soviet territory to aerial inspection.

It cannot be denied that the danger of surprise attack contributes to the tensions of the nuclear age, even if it does not cause them. It is less clear, however, that uncertainty about the opponent's intentions would be significantly reduced by aerial inspection, or that the inspection schemes could add a great deal to existing warning methods and intelligence information.

weapons has caused most disarmament negotiations since 1955 to concern themselves with means to prevent surprise attack. It is argued that since one of the causes for present tensions is the insecurity produced by the fear of imminent catastrophe, an inspection system that reduced the danger of surprise attack would

Because a strategic striking force could be wiped out if it were caught on the ground, it must be prepared to attack from its training bases at a moment's notice. If properly prepared, it should require no noticeable mobilization to launch its blow. An enemy should not be able to tell whether a given flight is a training

June 13, 1957

15

[L]

mission or a surprise attack until his early-warning line is crossed.

TO BE SURE, the Soviet Long Range Air Force has not yet reached this stage of readiness. Because it probably does not possess adequate capability for aerial refueling, it would have to transfer its planes to advance bases on the Kola or Chukchi Peninsulas, respectively east of Finland and west of Alaska, before it could attack. A system of inspection would inform us of this move and it might therefore increase our warning time. Nevertheless, the gain would be only relative, because any substantial movement of the Soviet Long Range Air Force to advance bases could hardly escape high-altitude detection or general intelligence surveillance even without inspection. And future Soviet planes will surely be able to launch an attack on the United States from training bases.

Because of the greater range of our planes and the nature of our base system, the Soviet Union would gain very little from either ground inspection or aerial surveillance. It knows the location of most of our airbases, and since it will presumably strike the first blow in an all-out war, it is assured of maximum warning in any case. It can be argued, of course, that the Soviet Union may not consider the danger of a United States surprise attack so slight, and that it would thus gain added security from an inspection

system. But unless most of the planes are grounded all the time and both sides are certain that no substantial installations are hidden, there is no guarantee that planes on so-called training flights will not be used for surprise attack. Even filing flight plans in advance would not eliminate this danger. Given the speed of modern planes, by the time inspectors realize that a violation of a flight plan has occurred and can communicate this information to their home government, the planes will probably have reached the opposing early-warning lines. Moreover, if flight plans were cleverly arranged, it would be very difficult to discover whether a given flight was a move to advance bases or the prelude to an all-out attack.

Inspection could, of course, be linked to the grounding of all planes, except perhaps a very small number that would be insufficient to inflict a catastrophic blow. Such a course would be highly dangerous, however. It would be difficult to maintain the readiness or the morale of the retaliatory force without constant training. Since our strategy is more dependent on strategic striking forces than that of the Soviet Union, the grounding of all planes would work to the advantage of the other side. Even if we should develop a capability for limited war equal to that of the Soviet Union, the grounding of our strategic air force would stand to benefit our op-

ponent. It would tell him the precise deployment of our retaliatory force and enable him to concentrate his attack and his defenses against it. To be sure, we would have the same information about the Soviet Long Range Air Force. But that information would be considerably less useful to us.

### Three Hours at Most

The maximum warning that could be achieved by even a perfect inspection system is the interval between the time planes leave their bases and the time they would have been detected by existing warning systems. With present planes, this would amount to an interval of perhaps three hours for the nation under attack. The aggressor would gain no additional warning time from an inspection system because naturally he would alert his defenses before mounting his blow. To be sure, three hours is not negligible. But since neither side could be immediately certain that an apparent violation of inspection meant war, the victim might have trouble making effective use of the additional warning. He would be tempted to delay his counterblow until the aggressor crossed the early-warning line—which is precisely the situation today.

Moreover, as the speed of planes increases, the warning time will be progressively reduced. In the age of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile—less than ten years away—the maximum warning time possible, assuming perfect communication between the inspector and his home government, would be thirty minutes: the period of time the missile would be in transit. In the age of the missile and the supersonic bomber, even a foolproof inspection system will tell the major powers only what they already know: that their opponent has the capability of launching a devastating attack at a moment's notice and with a minimum of warning.

SINCE FLYING TIME from the interior of the U.S.S.R. to our early-warning line is about three hours with present planes, each base of the Soviet Long Range Air Force would have to be photographed at least every three hours. If the reconnaissance occurred at longer intervals,

16

THE REPORTER

the early-warning line would provide a better indication of a surprise attack because an attack launched immediately after an aerial inspection would reach the early-warning line before the next reconnaissance sortie discovered that the opposing force had left its base. As the speed of planes increased, the frequency of reconnaissance missions would also have to be increased so that in practice reconnaissance planes would probably have to hover over enemy airfields almost constantly. And in the missile age it is not even certain that aerial reconnaissance could discover launching sites and be able to warn of impending attack.

It is therefore unlikely that our present vigilance could be reduced or that insecurity would be removed by any inspection system now in prospect. The machinery required would be so formidable and the benefits so trivial or uncertain that an inspection system might actually have pernicious consequences. It might give a misleading impression of security and therefore tempt us into relaxing our guard. More likely, however, it would induce both sides to place their striking forces in an even greater state of readiness in order to compensate for the loss of secrecy.

Indeed, unless designed with extraordinary care, a system of inspection might well make a tense situation more difficult. The value of inspection depends not only on the collection of facts but also on their interpretation. But the information produced by inspection systems is inevitably fragmentary and is likely to be most difficult to obtain when it is most needed—when international tensions are at their height. On

the other hand, the only meaningful reaction to a seeming violation is to launch an immediate retaliatory attack, because protests could not begin to be effective before enemy planes had reached their target. The knowledge that all-out war would follow any apparent violations might well aggravate the tenseness of international relations. Instead of reducing the danger of thermonuclear conflict, an inspection system might make more likely an all-out war based on a misunderstanding of the opponent's intentions.

From the point of view of preventing an all-out war, ignorance may be preferable to partial knowledge. Disarmament negotiations, as heretofore conceived, may therefore cause war—if it does come—to take the most absolute form. In their attempt to find total solutions the negotiations may prevent the achievement of intermediary goals that are attainable.

## Rules for Limited War

One such attainable goal would be to mitigate the horrors of war. One of the most important tasks of disarmament negotiations should therefore be to establish a common understanding of the possibilities and mutual advantages of limiting warfare.

Such a program would help overcome the impasse in which we find ourselves paralyzed by the implications of our own deterrent strategy. It would relate disarmament to strategy and thus help to bridge the gap that now exists between force and diplomacy. It would overcome a situation in which the Soviet leaders can conduct atomic blackmail in the guise of disarmament

negotiations and undermine the will to resist by evoking the most fearful consequences of such a course.

Above all, a program to mitigate the horrors of war could be used to clarify the intentions of the opposing sides and thereby prevent the catastrophe of an all-out war resulting from miscalculation and misunderstanding. Even a unilateral declaration of what we understand by limited war would accomplish a great deal because it would provide a strong incentive to the Soviet Union to adopt a similar interpretation. Finally, given the likelihood that some nuclear weapons will be used in any war involving the two major blocs, even if it is not total, it is imperative to establish in advance the psychological and political framework of such a conflict.

It has been argued that the deliberate ambiguity of our present position, in which we do not define what we understand by limited war or under what circumstances we might fight it, is in itself a deterrent because the enemy can never be certain that any military action on his part will not unleash all-out war. But if we wish to pose the maximum deterrent, an explicit declaration of massive retaliation would seem far more advantageous. The goal of our ambiguity is to combine the advantages of two incompatible courses: to pose the threat of all-out war for purposes of deterrence, but to keep open the possibility of a less catastrophic strategy if deterrence fails.

Ambiguity, however, may give rise to the notion that we do not intend to resist at all—and thus encourage aggression. Or it may cause an aggressor to interpret resistance intended to localize the conflict as a

June 13, 1957

17

prelude to all-out war. Instead of strengthening the deterrent and opening the way for a strategy short of all-out war, the deliberate ambiguity of our position may weaken the deterrent and bring on the most catastrophic kind of war.

Moreover, a diplomatic program designed to convey our understanding of the nature of limited war may be important because it is not certain that the Soviet leaders have fully analyzed all the options of the nuclear period. Marshal Zhukov and other Soviet leaders have denied the possibility of limited nuclear war both at the Twentieth Party Congress (Moscow, February, 1956) and afterward. If this represents their real conviction and not simply a form of psychological warfare, an energetic diplomacy addressed to the problem of limiting war might stimulate some second thoughts on the part of the Soviet general staff. In these terms, our diplomacy may have to be a substitute for lack of imagination on the part of Soviet leadership.

BEFORE we can convey our notion of limiting war to the other side, however, we must admit the possibility to ourselves. We must also be clear in our minds as to what we actually mean. At present no such clarity exists among either our military or our political leaders. Our services are operating on the basis of partly overlapping, partly inconsistent doctrines. Some of these deny the possibility of limited war, while others define it so variously that even from a strictly military point of view we are hardly able to conduct limited war either physically or conceptually.

If our military staffs could become clear about a doctrine of limited war, we could then use disarmament negotiations to seek some acceptance of that doctrine by the other side. It would not be necessary for such a concept to be embodied in an international treaty or even for the Soviets to adhere to it formally. There should be no illusions, in fact, about the ease with which the Soviets might be induced to forgo the advantages of atomic blackmail. The primary purpose of such a program would be to convey our intentions to the Soviet bloc and to encourage

it likewise to consider a limitation on war in its own interest.

## Sanctuaries and 'Clean' Bombs

Against this background, it is possible to visualize a diplomatic program designed to bring about a tacit, if not a formal, understanding of the framework of limited war. Although the details of such a program would require thorough technical study, some tentative ideas can nevertheless be advanced. Even if on closer examination some of these proposals appear not to be feasible, they may indicate a general direction worthy of serious attention.

Without damage to our interest, we could announce that while Soviet aggression will be resisted with nuclear weapons, we will make every effort to limit their effect and to spare civilian populations as much as possible. To this end, we could propose that both sides list the bases of their strategic air force. These bases would be immune from attack if located more than a certain distance from the combat zone (say fifty miles) and if they admitted inspectors. In the same way, all cities fifty miles from the combat zone would be immune. Within that zone, cities could purchase immunity by being declared open and admitting inspectors. An open city would be one that did not contain, within a radius of thirty miles from the center, any installations that could be used against military forces. The term "military installation" should be literally defined and not extended to industrial plants. Although the inspectors might be provided by neutral nations, it would be preferable if they were experts of the opposing side, because their reports would then have a much higher credibility.

The elimination of area targets would place an upper limit on the size of weapons that it would be profitable to use. While it would be impossible to control effectively the explosive power of various weapons, there is one self-policing dividing line: between weapons that produce significant fallout effects and those which do not. The former are devices detonated close to the ground with an explosive power above five hundred kilotons of TNT. The latter are weapons of a smaller size; higher-yield weapons exploded in the air;

and so-called "clean" bombs, a new development that claims to practically eliminate fallout even in high-yield weapons. We might therefore announce that we would not resort to any nuclear weapons that produce dangerous fallout unless the enemy violates this principle.

SUCH A PROGRAM would have several advantages over disarmament schemes designed only to prevent surprise attack. In limited war the aggressor would still be anxious to avoid a thermonuclear holocaust. He would therefore be eager to continue to observe limitations—at least as long as the other side possesses a sufficient retaliatory force to make all-out war unattractive. And both protagonists would presumably be eager rather than reluctant to overlook occasional violations.

An additional advantage of the plan is that the inspectors could provide at least some political contact. Thus the mechanics of arms limitations would also improve the opportunity for a rapid settlement if the contenders should desire it. And by relating disarmament negotiations to military strategy, the plan would force opposing staffs to consider options other than the stark alternative of total peace (which may mean total surrender) or total war.

## 'We Would Lose Nothing'

It may be objected that the program outlined here would in effect neutralize cities and seriously interfere with military operations. From the military standpoint, however, it would seem to make little difference whether a city is neutralized by the presence of inspection teams or by atomic annihilation. As for impairing military operations, the handicap would be the same for both sides. The military will have to accept the fact that short of a thermonuclear holocaust purely military decisions are no longer possible, and that they must adapt their tactics to the new technology.

Other criticisms assert that a program for limiting war assumes a degree of human rationality for which history offers no warranty. But neither does history offer any example of the extraordinary destructiveness of modern weapons. A program that seeks to establish some

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THE REPORTER

[LC]

principles of war limitation in advance of hostilities would seem in any case to make fewer demands on rationality than one that attempted to improvise the rules of war in the confusion of battle.

The idea that deterrence can only be achieved by the threat of maximum destruction deserves close scrutiny. The usual case of aggression has a specific objective. It is not necessary to threaten destruction of the home base of the enemy to inhibit it; it is sufficient to prevent the aggressor from attaining his goal. An aggressor would seem to have no motive for mounting an attack if he cannot calculate a reasonable chance of success.

The United States should therefore shift the emphasis of disarmament negotiations from the almost insoluble problem of preventing surprise attack to an effort to mitigate the horrors of war. We would lose nothing even if we announced a program of war limitation unilaterally. If the Soviet Union begins a war by an all-out surprise attack, we would react by using every weapon in our arsenal. If it begins hostilities on a limited scale, a limited war could be fought according to rules established well in advance. And the inspection system sketched here would serve a threefold purpose: as a warning against surprise attack, as an instrument for keeping the war limited, and as a device to maintain contact with the opponent so that a political settlement would be possible at any point in the military operations.

THE LIMITATION of war described here is impossible, however, without a strategic doctrine adapted to nuclear weapons. It presupposes an ability to use force with discrimination and to establish political goals in which the question of national survival is not involved in every issue. It also requires a public opinion that has been educated in the realities of the nuclear age. In short, a program of war limitation cannot be used as a cheaper means for imposing unconditional surrender. The concept of limited war and the diplomacy appropriate to it reflect the fact that in the nuclear age the possibility of total solutions no longer exists.

## A CHANGE IN THE AIR

### ERIC SEVAREID

The impression is deepening that on the world's most urgent problem, armament control, an initial agreement with the Soviet Union is really possible. There are two reasons for this: the fact that Dulles and Stassen went over the negotiations with the Senate Disarmament subcommittee before Stassen returned to the London talks; and the tone of the President's brief remarks at his news conference on May 22.

There is a walking-on-eggs feeling on this problem in high circles; this would not be so if the negotiations were still only in the stage of debating points for propaganda reasons. The President clearly doesn't wish to take a chance on a single egg being broken. He said on May 22 that our first concern should be to make certain we are not being recalcitrant or picayunish ourselves; that we are open-minded, ready to meet the Russians halfway. It was immediately assumed by his listeners that he was trying to remove any adverse impression made on the Russians by the jolting remarks of Admiral Radford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Radford, who had been away and out of touch with the negotiations for several weeks, bluntly stated that the Russians can't be trusted on a disarmament agreement or anything else. Radford does represent a continuing school of thought with this attitude, but this group is being challenged by another group, led by Mr. Stassen, who believe that this attitude would not only condemn the world to an eventually fatal arms race but is beside the point. They are equally opposed to buying a pig in a poke; the whole point of current negotiations is to get a beginning agreement that will be mutually enforceable and that does not depend on trust or "sincerity."

The President himself used to raise that objection—the question of Russian sincerity—almost automatically whenever this broad problem came up. It would seem highly significant that he is not doing so now. Pretty clearly, he is impressed with the fact that the Russians are making counterproposals on the aerial-inspection idea. When he first proposed this at the Geneva Conference two years ago, the Russian leaders immediately scoffed at the whole idea. But now they have accepted it in principle. They are believed to be serious, not

merely making propaganda, though the differences on the particular real estate to be inspected might bog the whole thing down. Nevertheless, this represents a vital Russian switch, and when the President says that our very first concern should be our own open-mindedness, then the whole negotiating atmosphere has obviously changed.

Why this change? Basically because the realization has sunk deep here, and apparently in Moscow, that neither country could reap anything but destruction in a big war and that the risks of sliding into such a war will grow as more and more nations are able to produce the ultimate weapons. Thus the urgent sense that unless these monstrous things are brought under international control soon, not even a binding Russian-American agreement could guarantee the peace. The day is foreseeable when even the smallest and most irresponsible nation could plunge the world into the pit.

In the background of this new atmosphere is the spreading feeling that we are dealing with a different Kremlin. Stalin is dead. There is an attempt by some experts within our government to break the hard mold of American thinking about Russia, the mold formed by so many years of cold war with Stalin. Automatic assumptions that Russia seriously intends to conquer the world, that she will take great risks with world peace as she did in Korea, that she dictates to Red China, that western Communist Parties will remain under Kremlin control—these basic assumptions are being challenged by some men in official quarters here. These men are convinced that Russia's stake in peace is quite as important as ours, and that the old Stalin type of harsh, tight rule, in Russia, in the satellites, and in western Communist Parties, is loosening and will continue to loosen. No more than the Radfords do these men argue for unilateral American disarmament; indeed, they think that would check present Russian trends and tempt the Kremlin back toward Stalinist expansionism. They do argue that certain conditions have changed and that, as the President has indicated, our own thinking must change along with them.

(From a broadcast over CBS Radio)

June 13, 1957

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AT HOME & ABROAD

# The Reform That Reformed Itself

WILLIAM H. HESSLER

SOME TIME next fall the oldest and hardiest municipal-reform movement in America will go on trial for its life. For the fifth time in thirty-two years the people of Cincinnati will vote to keep or to abandon proportional-representation voting, the key to a unique and surprisingly durable adventure in good city government.

Four times the voters of Cincinnati chose to keep P.R., but only by the slightest of majorities. Once again next fall, a few hundred votes will probably tip the scales—for continued reform or for a return to one-party machine rule. Technically, only a method of voting is at issue. But in reality this is a referendum on a municipal way of life.

Whatever its intrinsic virtues and defects, whatever its good or bad results in other cities, P.R. in Cincinnati has provided the means by which the dissimilar elements of the reform movement are fused into one cohesive body. P.R. is the force that gives them rough equality with the Republican machine. Its real function in Cincinnati, therefore, has been to provide two-party government for a city that had one-party government until 1925. If they abandon P.R., the people of Cincinnati will be voting to restore the old order, to give the G.O.P. machine the assurance of electing at least eight of the nine councilmen in every future election.

## Do-Gooders Rarely Last

Reform in Cincinnati is a paradox of American politics. For this is not a city prone to innovation or to leveling social action. It is a city planted in the heart of the Taft country, with the climate and texture of a conservative hinterland.

From a pedestal in Lytle Park, a bronze Lincoln of heroic size looks with melancholy compassion westward down Fourth Street, between files of banks, office buildings, clubs, and well-bred shops. But the men of business and finance who people this street do not frequently look for guidance to the first leader of a Republican Party that was new and radical in his time—to the man who spoke at Gettysburg about "government of the people, by the people, for the people." Nor do they put their trust in the apostle of modern Republicanism who spends his weekends at Gettysburg. The con-

servatism of the solid Cincinnatians who flank Fourth Street is the brand articulated by men of their own Ohio—McKinley, Hanna, Harding, Taft, Bricker, Humphrey.

Yet Cincinnati is also an island of progress and innovation in municipal government. With more than half a million people, it is the largest city governed by a city manager; it has the most honest and efficient government of any of the larger cities of the nation. What is much more remarkable, however, is the fact that Cincinnati has had this high order of civic efficiency and

integrity for thirty-two years without a break.

Lasting reform is a rarity. Typically, a city reforms only when corruption becomes so conspicuous that the voters get mad. Well-intentioned men move in, struggle against an evil system, and then give up after two or four or at most six years. Fervor, not endurance, is the pattern. The Nice People who promote reforms are almost never willing to go to the mound and pitch nine innings. They only want to toss out the first ball, preferably before a large crowd, when the new season starts. Politics, they figure, is like baseball, a game for professionals.

The persistence of good government in Ohio's second largest city is due most of all to the fact that the reformers, the Nice People who got mad, waded out into the main stream of politics. They knew politics was a dirty business, but they were persuaded it didn't have to be. So they went to the hustings themselves, much as other Nice People cover their blocks for the Community Chest or the Fine Arts Fund. They started out as do-gooders. And in spirit they are still do-gooders.

But where methods and skills were concerned, they soon turned pro.

Furthermore, this was a double-barreled reform. In the 1920's, these do-gooders reformed the city government. In the 1930's and early 1940's, under the hammer blows of economic depression, they transformed their own reform movement into an instrument of liberal social policy.

## The Cox Empire

It all began gradually, as major reforms must, with the slow accumulation of smoldering indignation. From

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THE REPORTER

4th June, 1957.

Dear Mr. Kissinger,

Thank you so much for
sending me a copy of your "Foreign
Affairs" article "STRATEGY AND
ORGANISATION".

I had seen it and thought
it quite first class, but I am delighted
to have your complimentary copy to keep.

Something in the nature of
your distinction between tactical and
strategic means is certainly what is
required in order to deal with the
revolution of nuclear warfare. Indeed,
every possible device for distinguishing
between tactical atomic and total war is
necessary if we are to be able to deal
with Communism without blowing ourselves
to pieces.

If it is not too much
trouble, I wonder whether you could once
again let me have, say, 100 copies of
your article, by sea mail, for us to
distribute to the members of the Brighton
Conference Association. This, as you
probably appreciate, will ensure that it
is circulated over a wide variety of
people capable of having a certain amount
of influence in this country.

I do not know whether you saw
that the "Boston Herald" printed my
recent Lecture in their editions of
May 19th, 20th and 21st.

With kindest regards.

Yours sincerely,

The Evening Star-The Sunday Star
WASHINGTON 4, D. C.

June 10, 1957

Dr. Henry A. Kissinger
22 West 55th Street
New York, New York

Dear Dr. Kissinger:

Enclosed is the edited version of your Foreign Affairs article I told you about in our telephone conversation.

The special article I am proposing to you would cover essentially the same ground. I now wonder, however, whether it wouldn't be better to change the organization, leading off with the thought expressed in the second paragraph of your section III (marked with red asterisk). This would put some of the most provocative material directly before the reader, and at the same time provide a base upon which to build your discussion of the defects in the present military organization and your proposals for changes. However, if you should decide to undertake this project I leave the final decision on organization to you.

Let me repeat that while I recognize that the article must cover the ground covered in the Foreign Affairs article, I hope that the finished product will be sufficiently different from that article so that we can confine the editorial note to your own background and your book, without cluttering it up with mention of the magazine.

As I told you, your Star article may provide the nucleus for a full page on the general subject of nuclear age military policy, so I would like to know your decision just as soon as possible. The article should be in the neighborhood of 2,000-2,500 words, and we would pay you $75 for it.

CS:ml

Encl.