Conscience of a Conservative Page 7

  The temptation is strong to blame the deterioration of America's fortunes on the Soviet Union's acquisition of nuclear weapons. But this is self-delusion. The rot had set in, the crumbling of our position was already observable, long before the Communists detonated their first Atom Bomb. Even in the early 1950s, when America still held unquestioned nuclear superiority, it was clear that we were losing the Cold War. Time and again, in my campaign speeches of 1952, I warned my fellow Arizonans that "American Foreign Policy has brought us from a position of undisputed power, in seven short years, to the brink of possible disaster." And in the succeeding seven years, that trend, because its cause remains, has continued.

  The real cause of the deterioration can be simply stated. Our enemies have understood the nature of the conflict, and we have not. They are determined to win the conflict, and we are not.

  I hesitate to restate the obvious—to say again what has been said so many times before by so many others: that the Communists' aim is to conquer the world. I repeat it because it is the beginning and the end of our knowledge about the conflict between East and West. I repeat it because I fear that however often we have given lip-service to this central political fact of our time, very few of us have believed it. If we had, our entire approach to foreign policy over the past fourteen years would have been radically different, and the course of world events radically changed.

  If an enemy power is bent on conquering you, and proposes to turn all of his resources to that end, he is at war with you; and you—unless you contemplate surrender—are at war with him. Moreover—unless you contemplate treason—your objective, like his, will be victory. Not "peace," but victory. Now, while traitors (and perhaps cowards) have at times occupied key positions in our government, it is clear that our national leadership over the past fourteen years has favored neither surrender nor treason. It is equally clear, however, that our leaders have not made victory the goal of American policy. And the reason that they have not done so, I am saying, is that they have never believed deeply that the Communists are in earnest.

  Our avowed national objective is "peace." We have, with great sincerity, "waged" peace, while the Communists wage war. We have sought "settlements," while the Communists seek victories. We have tried to pacify the world. The Communists mean to own it. Here is why the contest has been an unequal one, and why, essentially, we are losing it.

  Peace, to be sure, is a proper goal for American policy—as long as it is understood that peace is not all we seek. For we do not want the peace of surrender. We want a peace in which freedom and justice will prevail, and that—given the nature of Communism—is a peace in which Soviet power will no longer be in a position to threaten us and the rest of the world. A tolerable peace, in other words, must follow victory over Communism. We have been fourteen years trying to bury that unpleasant fact. It cannot be buried and any foreign policy that ignores it will lead to our extinction as a nation.

  We do not, of course, want to achieve victory by force of arms. If possible, overt hostilities should always be avoided; especially is this so when a shooting war may cause the death of many millions of people, including our own. But we cannot, for that reason, make the avoidance of a shooting war our chief objective. If we do that—if we tell ourselves that it is more important to avoid shooting than to keep our freedom—we are committed to a course that has only one terminal point: surrender. We cannot, by proclamation, make war "unthinkable." For it is not unthinkable to the Communists: naturally, they would prefer to avoid war, but they are prepared to risk it, in the last analysis, to achieve their objectives. We must, in our hearts, be equally dedicated to our objectives. If war is unthinkable to us but not to them, the famous "balance of terror" is not a balance at all, but an instrument of blackmail. U.S.-Soviet power may be in balance; but if we, and not they, rule out the possibility of using that power, the Kremlin can create crisis after crisis, and force the U.S., because of our greater fear of war, to back down every time. And it cannot be long before a universal Communist Empire sits astride the globe.

  The rallying cry of an appeasement organization, portrayed in a recent novel on American politics, was "I would rather crawl on my knees to Moscow than die under an Atom bomb." This sentiment, of course, repudiates everything that is courageous and honorable and dignified in the human being. We must—as the first step toward saving American freedom—affirm the contrary view and make it the cornerstone of our foreign policy: that we would rather die than lose our freedom. There are ways which I will suggest later on—not easy ways, to be sure—in which we may save both our freedom and our lives; but all such suggestions are meaningless and vain unless we first understand what the objective is. We want to stay alive, of course; but more than that we want to be free. We want to have peace; but before that we want to establish the conditions that will make peace tolerable. "Like it or not," Eugene Lyons has written, "the great and inescapable task of our epoch is not to end the Cold War but to win it."

  I suggest that we look at America's present foreign policy, and ask whether it is conducive to victory. There are several aspects of this policy. Let us measure each of them by the test: Does it help defeat the enemy?

  DEFENSIVE ALLIANCES

  Through NATO, SEATO and the Central Treaty Organization in mid-Asia, we have served notice on the Kremlin that overt Communist aggression in certain areas of the world will be opposed by American arms. It is likely that the existence of these alliances has helped discourage military adventurism by the Communists.

  Still, we should not overestimate the value of the alliances. Though they play a significant role in safeguarding American freedom, there are a number of reasons why it is a limited role.

  First, the alliance system is not co-extensive with the line that must be held if enemy expansion is to be prevented. There are huge areas of the non-Communist world that the alliances do not touch. Nor—even assuming America is strong enough to guard a world-wide defense perimeter—is there any prospect of bringing these areas into the system. The so-called neutral countries of the Middle East, Africa and Southern Asia have refused to align themselves with the anti-Communist cause, and it is in those areas, as we might expect, that the Communists are making significant strides. This is a critical weakness. If all of those areas should fall under Communist rule, the alliances would be outflanked everywhere: the system would be reduced to a series of outposts, and probably indefensible ones at that, in a wholly hostile world.

  Secondly, the alliance system does not protect even its members against the most prevalent kind of Communist aggression: political penetration and internal subversion. Iraq is a case in point. We had pledged ourselves to support the Iraqi against overt Soviet aggression—not only under the Baghdad Pact of which Iraq was the cornerstone, but also under the Eisenhower Doctrine. Iraq fell victim to a pro-Communist coup without an American or Russian shot being fired. Cuba is another example. If the Red Army had landed in Havana, we would have come to Cuba's aid. Castro's forces, however, were native Cubans; as a result, a pro-Communist regime has become entrenched on our very doorstep through the technique of internal subversion. And so it will always be with an enemy that lays even more emphasis on political warfare than on military warfare. So it will be until we learn to meet the enemy on his own grounds.

  But thirdly, the alliance system cannot adequately protect its members even against overt aggression. In the past, the Communists have been kept in check by America's strategic air arm. Indeed, in the light of the weakness of the allied nations' conventional military forces, our nuclear superiority has been the alliances' only real weapon. But as the Soviet Union draws abreast of us in nuclear strength, that weakness could prove our undoing. In a nuclear stalemate, where neither side is prepared to go "all out" over local issues, the side with the superior conventional forces has an obvious advantage. Moreover, it is clear that we cannot hope to match the Communist world man for man, nor are we capable of furnishing the guns and tanks necessary to defend thirty
nations scattered over the face of the globe. The long-overdue answer, as we will see later on, lies in the development of a nuclear capacity for limited wars.

  Finally—and I consider this the most serious defect of all—the alliance system is completely defensive in nature and outlook. This fact, in the light of the Communists' dynamic, offensive strategy, ultimately dooms it to failure. No nation at war, employing an exclusively defensive strategy, can hope to survive for long. Like the boxer who refuses to throw a punch, the defense-bound nation will be cut down sooner or later. As long as every encounter with the enemy is fought on his initiative, on grounds of his choosing and with weapons of his choosing, we shall keep on losing the Cold War.

  FOREIGN AID

  Another aspect of our policy is the Foreign Aid program. To it, in the last fourteen years, we have committed over eighty billions of American treasure—in grants, loans, material, and technical assistance. I will not develop here what every thinking American knows about this Gargantuan expenditure—that it has had dire consequences, not only for the American taxpayer, but for the American economy; that it has been characterized by waste and extravagance both overseas and in the agencies that administer it; and that it has created a vast reservoir of anti-Americanism among proud peoples who, however irrationally, resent dependence on a foreign dole. I would rather put the question, Has the Foreign Aid program, for all of its drawbacks, made a compensating contribution toward winning the Cold War?

  And this test, let me say parenthetically, is the only one under which the Foreign Aid program can be justified. It cannot, that is to say, be defended as a charity. The American government does not have the right, much less the obligation, to try to promote the economic and social welfare of foreign peoples. Of course, all of us are interested in combating poverty and disease wherever it exists. But the Constitution does not empower our government to undertake that job in foreign countries, no matter how worthwhile it might be. Therefore, except as it can be shown to promote America's national interests, the Foreign Aid program is unconstitutional.

  It can be argued, but not proved, that American aid helped prevent Western Europe from going Communist after the Second World War. It is true, for example, that the Communist parties in France and Italy were somewhat weaker after economic recovery than before it. But it does not follow that recovery caused the reduction in Communist strength, or that American aid caused the recovery. It is also true, let us remember, that West Germany recovered economically at a far faster rate than France or Italy, and received comparatively little American aid.

  It also can be argued that American military aid has made the difference between friendly countries having the power to fight off or discourage Communist aggression, and not having that power. Here, however, we must distinguish between friendly countries that were not able to build their own military forces, and those that were. Greece, Turkey, Free China*, South Korea and South Vietnam needed our help. Other countries, England and France, for example, were able to maintain military forces with their own resources. For many years now, our allies in Western Europe have devoted smaller portions of their national budgets to military forces than we have. The result is that the American people, in the name of military aid, have been giving an economic handout to these nations; we have permitted them to transfer to their domestic economy funds which, in justice, should have been used in the common defense effort.

  Now let us note a significant fact. In each of the situations we have mentioned so far—situations where some evidence exists that Foreign Aid has promoted American interests—there is a common denominator: in every case, the recipient government was already committed to our side. We may have made these nations, on balance, stronger and more constant allies, though even that is debatable. But we did not cause them to alter their basic political commitments. This brings us to the rest of the Foreign Aid program—and to the great fallacy that underlies it.

  Increasingly, our foreign aid goes not to our friends, but to professed neutrals—and even to professed enemies. We furnish this aid under the theory that we can buy the allegiance of foreign peoples—or at least discourage them from "going Communist"—by making them economically prosperous. This has been called the "stomach theory of Communism," and it implies that a man's politics are determined by the amount of food in his belly.

  Everything we have learned from experience, and from our observation of the nature of man, refutes this theory. A man's politics are, primarily, the product of his mind. Material wealth can help him further his political goals, but it will not change them. The fact that some poor, illiterate people have "gone Communist" does not prove that poverty caused them to do so any more than the fact that Alfred K. and Martha D. Stern are Communists proves that great wealth and a good education make people go Communist. Let us remember that Communism is a political movement, and that its weapons are primarily political. The movement's effectiveness depends on small cadres of political activists, and these cadres are, typically, composed of literate and well-fed people. We are not going to change the minds of such political activists, or impede their agitation of the masses by a "war on poverty," however worthy such an effort might be on humanitarian grounds.

  It thus makes little sense to try to promote anti-Communism by giving money to governments that are not anti-Communist, that are, indeed, far more inclined to the Soviet-type society than to a free one. And let us remember that the foreign policies of many of the allegedly neutral nations that receive our aid are not "neutral" at all. Is Sukarno's Indonesia neutral when it encourages Red Chinese aggression? Or Nehru's India when it censures the Western effort to recover Suez but refuses to censure the Soviet invasion of Hungary? Or Nasser's United Arab Republic which equips its armed forces with Communist weapons and Communist personnel? Is American aid likely to make these nations less pro-Communist? Has it?

  But let us, for the moment, concede the validity of the "stomach theory," and ask a further question: Is our foreign aid program the kind that will bring prosperity to underdeveloped countries? We Americans believe—and we can cite one hundred and fifty years of experience to support the belief—that the way to build a strong economy is to encourage the free play of economic forces: free capital, free labor, a free market. Yet every one of the "neutral" countries we are aiding is committed to a system of State Socialism. Our present policy of government-to-government aid strengthens Socialism in those countries. We are not only perpetuating the inefficiency and waste that always attends government-controlled economies; by strengthening the hand of those governments, we are making it more difficult for free enterprise to take hold. For this reason alone, we should eliminate all government-to-government capital assistance and encourage the substitution of American private investment.

  Our present Foreign Aid program, in sum, is not only ill-administered, but ill-conceived. It has not, in the majority of cases, made the free world stronger; it has made America weaker; and it has created in minds the world over an image of a nation that puts prime reliance, not on spiritual and human values, but on the material things that are the stock-in-trade of Communist propaganda. To this extent we have adopted Communist doctrine.

  In the future, if our methods are to be in tune with our true objectives, we will confine foreign aid to military and technical assistance to those nations that need it and that are committed to a common goal of defeating world Communism.

  NEGOTIATIONS

  As I write, the world is waiting for another round of diplomatic conferences between East and West. A full scale summit meeting is scheduled for Spring; later on, President Eisenhower and Premier Khrushchev will have further talks in the Soviet Union. And we are told that this is only the beginning of a long-range American policy to try to settle world problems by "negotiation."

  As the preparations for the Spring meetings go forward, I am struck by a singular fact: no one on our side claims—let alone believes—that the West will be stronger after these new negotiations than it is today. The
same was true last Summer. We agreed to "negotiate" about Berlin—not because we hoped to gain anything by such talks—but because the Communists had created a "crisis," and we could think of nothing better to do about it than go to the conference table. After all, we assured ourselves, there is no harm in talking.

  I maintain there is harm in talking under present conditions. There are several reasons why this is so. First of all, Communists do not look upon negotiations, as we do, as an effort to reach an agreement. For them, negotiations are simply an instrument of political warfare. For them, a summit meeting is another battle in the struggle for the world. A diplomatic conference, in Communist language, is a "propaganda forum from which to speak to the masses over the heads of their leaders."

  Of course, if the Communists can obtain a formal agreement beneficial to them, so much the better. But if not, the negotiations themselves will provide victory enough. For example, when the Soviets challenged our rights in West Berlin, we handed them a victory by the mere act of sitting down at the conference table. By agreeing to negotiate on that subject, we agreed that our rights in Berlin were "negotiable"—something they never were before. Thus we acknowledged, in effect, the inadequacy of our position, and the world now expects us to adjust it as proof of our good faith. Our answer to Khrushchev's ultimatum should have been that the status of West Berlin concerns only West Berliners and the occupying powers, and is therefore not a matter that we are prepared to discuss with the Soviet Union. That would have been the end of the Berlin "crisis."