John Foster Dulles--An Agonizing Reappraisal

For a man who is supposed to have spent a large part of his life preparing for the Secretaryship of the U.S. State Department, John Foster Dulles has made a surprisingly large number of blunders. Since his appointment in January, 1953, Dulles has probably done a more thorough job of lowering U.S. prestige and power than any Secretary of State in the recent past.

To be fair to the President who appointed Dulles, one must begin with a disclaimer. For in many ways, President Eisenhower himself has shown that when he takes the lead of his country's foreign affairs, resulting policies are usually creative and responsible. The Atoms-for-Peace plan, last summer's Geneva Conference, and the scheme for mutual aerial inspection have all demonstrated that the President, when he chooses, can be a much more effective Secretary of State than his well-trained appointee.

Eisenhower or Dulles?

How Eisenhower has been able to stand by Dulles is difficult to understand. At Geneva, the President showed that sincere personal discussions with Soviet leaders are worthwhile, but at Geneva a year earlier, the Secretary of State departed from the Indo-China Conference boasting that he had never once spoken to Chou En-Lai. The President has called for positive reactions to petty Soviet moves, but the Secretary of State has responded to smallness with smallness--his retaliatory closing of 27 percent of U.S. territory to Russian nationals is typical. The President has called for deeds and not words, but the Secretary of State has given forth a stream of words--from "massive retaliation" to "agonizing reappraisal" to "liberation of the satellites" to "the Portuguese province of Goa" to "the brink of war"--which have done far more to frighten our allies and our potential allies than to scare the Soviet Union. The President has asked for close consultation between the U.S. and Britain and France, but the Secretary of State has released the Yalta Papers, announced U.S. Middle Eastern policy, and "unleashed" Chiang Kai-shek, without much more than a glance at Western Europe.

It would be encouraging, indeed, to conclude that these verbal blunders and tactical errors constitute all of Dulles' mistakes, and that the substance of his policy is basically sound. But for a Secretary of State who has travelled more miles than any previous Cabinet officer he shows remarkably little awareness of the world situation.

McCarthy Muddle

He might, in fact, have realized that his world begins in Washington, where State Department morale has probably come close to an all-time low under his administration. At a time when Senator McCarthy was attacking the State Department, Dulles responded not with a strong defense of the loyalty of the Department, but with the firing of career diplomats like John Paton Davies Jr., and with the appointment of Scott McLeod as Department security officer. And even since McCarthy's demise, Dulles has made no effort to begin a drastically-needed build-up process to make sure that when he leaves office, there will be a strong and creative Department--both in Washington and in foreign capitals.

In Europe, Dulles has seemed pleased with his diplomacy, but perhaps forgets that since he took office, Yugoslavia has moved closer to the Soviet orbit, France has torpedoed the European Defense Community, West Germany has produced more proponents for reunification before rearmament, and England has become distressed at the lack of high level consultation on major policy decisions. Dulles' responses to these situations, however, have been generally flexible and adequate, although the German problem is certainly far from solved. And his recent statement that he now sees NATO must shift--slightly--into the economic and political spheres, is encouraging.

While he has been relatively successful in Europe by carrying on inherited policies, he is making critical errors in other parts of the world. He seems to be applying somewhat outdated European answers--large military expenditures and strong collective security pacts--to Asian, African, and South American questions that demand far different solutions.

...In the East

In the Far East, he talks mainly of Japanese military forces when Japan may very well join the neutrals if her economic dilemma remains unsolved. He has staked U.S. prestige on the defense of two unimportant and indefensible islands off the Chinese coast, and he refuses to see that the U.S. must stop trying to overlook the existence of Communist China.

In Southeast Asia, his SEATO is a defense treaty minus most nations in Southeast Asia. It disregards facts which Indo-China should have demonstrated--that Communism in that part of the world must be fought with something in addition to rifles, that fear of European colonialism often blinds Asians to the new colonialism of China. Moreover, by arming Pakistan, Dulles has upset the balance of power between India and Pakistan, and has forced Indian neutralism into a regrettable anti-U.S. attitude.

In the Middle East, his scheme for a Northern tier alliance helped precipitate the latest Arab-Israel crisis and has provided an ineffective wall from Pakistan to Turkey which the Soviets seem to have taken some pleasure in jumping over.

In Africa, he has been unable to devise a policy which strikes the necessary balance between support for European allies and encouragement of local independence.

...In South America

In South America, too, he has flown to conferences with resolutions against Communism and has flown away before the under-developed nations south of the border could talk about the trade and aid that will do more to protect the area than all his resolutions put together.

In all of these actions by last year's "Man of the Year," there has been a disturbing failure to recognize that new forces are at work demanding new and imaginative diplomacy. Military regulars and deterrent atomic bombs are, indeed, indispenible; but this country's leaders must realize that people and ideas will--if they do not already--hold the time balance.

This, Dulles has failed to do. When he announces that Soviet tactics have changed from sneers to smiles because of American strength, he is open to criticism not merely as a Secretary of State who is careless with words, but more importantly, as one who fails to see that this country must rethink the future of its foreign policy. There are men close to the Administration who do see the changes demanded: Milton Eisenhower, John Sherman Cooper, Paul Hoffman, or Harold Stassen. If John Foster Dulles is not replaced, however, his continuance in office is likely to loom as a major issue in the November election.