The Crisis and Stevenson

If ever a time tried men's souls, it is this one. If there was ever a week that has thrown policies, cliches, and political oratory out of the window into a dead past, it was this one. Over and over again, in the early hours of Sunday morning, delegate after delegate in the United Nations rose to speak of "momentous events" as the British and French prepared to move in on Egypt, and as the Soviets, grasping the opportunity of Western disalliance to achieve one of the cheapest coups in world history, silenced the short-lived democracy in Hungary. Anyone who listened to the radio bulletins that interrupted the General Assembly session from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. Sunday--"Goodbye for now...Remember our souls...It is too late...the Russians are here...Help, help, help..."---knows that from now on the world cannot stand still. Alliances have fallen apart, the moderate view has not held, and a tide has been loosed that is carrying the world into a new era. The past is behind, and an unpredictable future--of either law or anarchy--lies ahead.

Were we to turn away from the urgent present to assess the blame for the crises in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, we would name, in reverse order, England and France--for defying the United Nations while claiming to uphold it; Israel--for replying to Egyptian provocations with her own tragic and wrong aggression; Egypt--for aiding suicide squads to fill Israel with terror; the Soviet Union--for encouraging Nasser in his heady confidence of playing East against West to his own advantage; and most important of all--the United States, through its Secretary of State, for conceiving that first tragic step, the Baghdad Pact, which gave the Soviets provocation to send Nasser the arms that unbalanced the Middle East, and for withdrawing the Aswan Dam offer in an insulting manner which provoked drastic Egyptian action. And most tragic, this whole chain of events--beginning with Dulles and ending with Eden--has divided the West and preoccupied world opinion while the Soviets wiped out the new Hungarian government.

Collapse and Reassessment

This collapse of the international status quo requires a re-evaluation of America's policy assumptions:

1. Today's "peace of mutual terror" based on nuclear weapons, and the unquenchable internal weaknesses within the Soviet orbit have changed the Soviet aim from world military conquest to desperate preservation of internal stability.

2. The Containment Policy, which was designed largely to meet the military threat, will no longer suffice in a situation of flux. Containment must now be translated into positive terms which can play upon Soviet weaknesses and which will take into account the increasing demand for neutralism and economic advance among Asian, African, and Arab nations.

3. The Western alliance, formed to meet the Soviet threat, has deep divisions within it, divisions which result from the combined issue of nationalism and anti-colonialism. This issue is likely to become more complex and more divisive as Soviet military expansion recedes as a threat. The United States, Canada, and India have emerged from this conflict as three key powers untouched by the onus of colonialism, and Communist China has kept itself relatively free from association with Soviet colonialism in Europe.

4. The United Nations has decided to take action in both the Middle East and Hungary, and by so doing, it has set for itself the test which will determine whether it becomes the world's hope for peace and law, or the world's well-intentioned delusion.

If these conclusions are the focus of world attention, they must also be the focus of American attention on this day before a critical national election. This is the time for new insights, new courage, new intelligence--in short, new leadership--by the American President. For these reasons, we once again reaffirm our support for Adlai Stevenson for the most important office in the world.

Success or Failure?

Since both Presidential candidates have reacted similarly to the present emergency, the importance of the emergency lies in the light it throws on the successes or failings of past policy. And past policy has depended too much on Ike's likeableness, and too little on the firm ties which must hold alliances together; too much on John Foster Dulles' paper treaties, and too little on moral, ideological, and economic leadership; too much, in short, in letting the foreign policy inherited from the Democrats decay in the process of bringing the Old Guard up to date, and too little on forging those new ideas which must meet new dilemmas.

At present, this administration has no African policy at all; its Middle Eastern policy has crumbled; its Asian policy is discredited by the absence of a new understanding with China and its dependence upon SEATO; its South American policy has failed to progress from paper resolutions to real economic cooperation; and its European policy has failed, utterly, to retain the confidence of key allies who were forced by the lack of firm U.S. leadership to take matters into their own intemperate hands. This is a policy of no-policy, and deserves repudiation.

Stevenson, by contrast, has responded to new situations with new ideas. During the campaign, he has symbolized his plea for a fresh approach with the question of discontinuing large-scale tests of nuclear weapons. Stevenson realizes that something is needed besides bigger and better weapons in today's world--something which will inspire people, instead of frighten and mutate them. He sees that a New America and a new world will emerge only from creative leadership. Specifically, in foreign affairs, Stevenson advisers like George Kennan, Chester Bowles, and Thomas Finletter grasp the problems involved in containment, neutralism, economic aid and defense. Supported by these advisers, Stevenson can add imaginative dimensions to this country's foreign policy during the next four critical years. Lincoln said that as our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew: This is the task confronting America in the world, and this is the task which Stevenson must undertake.