Decision in Belgrade

While there may be some doubts that the travelling circus of Messrs. Kruschev, Bulganin, and Co. will swing into Belgrade next week with "open hearts and pure minds," there can be no question that this latest of Soviet moves poses one of the most serious threats so far to the solidarity of the Western aliance. If only Yugoslavia were at stake, the Russian overtures for expanded trade and treaty ties would not be so significant. Yugoslavia, after all, is not a member of NATO and is bound to the West only through the Turkish-Greek triangle and United States military support. But the Soviet actions are important because they are typical of a new, positive Kremlin foreign policy which may well steal a long strategic march on the more rigid policies of the United States.

It is obvious that there is one central purpose of the forthcoming Russian visit: not necessarily to woo Tito into the Moscow camp--there is little chance of that--but to draw one more state from the Western defense system into a great neutral chain the length of Central Europe. The aspect of this latest venture which is not so obvious is its great departure from previous Soviet policy. In the present case, the move is not primarily military, as, say, was the establishment of the Berlin blockade or the arming of the satellite nations. Moscow now is holding out to Tito the promise of real economic concessions from which Yugoslavia can clearly benefit. And if the trend which began with the Austrian peace treaty should continue--and there is no reason to think that a Russian cannot recognize a good thing as well as the next man--the Kremlin will offer similar economic and political concessions to states farther west than the DBalkans.

For the United States, as the leader of the Western coalition, the present Soviet policy offers an almost insoluble paradox. If we withdraw our present objections to trade between the two camps of Europe, we face the unpleasant prospect of seeing our potential enemies materially strengthened. On the other hand, if we object to East-West trade which would obviously be beneficial to our allies, we will see even a further increase in European charges that the United States is meddluing in domestic politics that do not concern it; ultimately we might awaken to find that a once-strong alliance had crumbled. Finally, there is the very real possibility that there has been a shift in Russian policy: the men presently in the Kremlin might genuinely wish for peaceful co-existence. The door to such a goal is one which United States policy-makers must never shut.

In the face of so fluid a situation, the United States must formulate a foreign policy equally positive and vigorous as the Soviet challenge. It is not an overstatement to say that American policy in the last decade has been conspicuously aimed at the immediate situation, not the long-range contingency. Nothing shows this short-range concern better than the fact that Marshall-plan economic aid was converted into purely military aid at just the moment when the plan was finally beginning to restore pre-war levels of prosperity. So long as Russian policy was also disjointed, the United States could find considerable success in meeting each new threat as it developed. But the recent signs that the Kremlin is preparing a comprehensive long-range policy calls for an equally extensive reorientation in Washington.

Particularly necessary is a change from policy dominated by purely military factors to one shaped by political and economic considerations. The first step in such a policy should be even more sweeping liberalization of U.S. trade restrictions than so far planned. In his press conference on Wednesday, the President showed that Administration thinking runs along this line. "Certain sectors of our population," Mr. Eisenhower said, "unquestionably will have to make adjustments because they have not thought these things through." Indeed, one of the crucial questions of American policy will be whether the right wing of the President's own party will ever be able to subordinate its particular interests to the interests of the nation as a whole.

For it seems now that the only way this country can keep many of the states of Europe--and most important, a united Germany--from moving into the communist periphery, if not the communist orbit, is to make equally attractive concessions. The Administration has indicated that a new era of peace may be dawning. Properly, its policies continue to be cautious. But it must learn a lesson which in these postwar years seems to have been often neglected: that caution is not incompatible with positive action.