Lippmann Questions Mr. X

THE struggle toward a foreign policy for the United States is entering a new phase. At London, where the Big Four are attempting once more to frame a peace treaty for Germany and a settlement for Austria, it is already recognized that the results of this new endeavor will provide the go-ahead signal, for good or ill, on the issue of a divided Europe. Unless some unexpected progress is achieved through compromises the schism between East and West, or, more specifically, between the Soviet Union and the United States, will become fixed and confirmed. Simultaneously, at Washington a reluctant Congress finds itself coming to grips at last with the responsibilities of constructive leadership imposed upon the United States by victory.

At precisely this point, and with an excellent sense of timing, Walter Lippmann has come forward in The Cold War (Harper, $1.00) with the first fulldress critical analysis of the Truman Doctrine, the diplomatic philosophy underlying it, and its relationship to the ideas set forth by Mr. Marshall in his famous address at Harvard on June 5.

The Cold War is, in effect, Mr. Lippmann’s answer to the much-discussed essay written by the mysterious Mr. X and published last July in Foreign Affairs. In that revealing article Mr. X (who has been identified without denial as the present director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Board, George Kennan) undertook to lay bare the basis, in diplomacy and political thinking, of the Truman Doctrine. He sought to analyze Russia’s diplomatic behavior, to explain the policy devised to meet it, what procedures the policy seeks to follow, what goals its supporters hope to attain.

It is unfortunate that Mr. X’s article on “The Sources of Soviet Conduct is not included in this little volume together with Mr. Lippmann’s analysis. This difficulty, however, need deter no reader from The Cold War. By copious quotation Mr. Lippmann sets forth fairly and in all its essentials the thesis championed by Mr. X, and presumably by the authors of the Truman Doctrine within the State Department and the military agencies of our government. Any reader with a clear recollection of the crisis of last March, when the Doctrine was unfolded by the President to a startled Congress, will have no difficulty in understanding the importance of this volume.

The Cold War is written in excellent temper. It is as lucidly argued as a problem in mathematics. The author succeeds in lifting his discussion far above the level of heated polemics. His aim is not simply to expose the fallacies, the inevitable frustrations, and the dangers implicit in a policy based upon optimistic guesswork. He undertakes to redefine the post-war problem of peacemaking. He finds that the heart of that problem is the continuing presence of armies of occupation — especially Russian armies in Europe. He proposes that this fact should be dealt with by having recourse to one of the oldest and best-tested principles of both diplomacy and war — concentration of diplomatic effort at a point where possibilities of success are good and where success would produce the most far-reaching and ameliorative consequences.

Our diplomacy, says Mr. Lippmann, should be concerned with negotiations designed to induce withdrawal of all armies — including our own — from European states where they do not normally belong. Rejected, this proposal would at once clarify the issue. Attained, it would almost immediately re-establish an equilibrium among the powers, the absence of which is a primary cause of the world’s post-war troubles. In furtherance of this purpose, the author suggests that we rid ourselves once and for all of wishful thinking about the Germans, refuse to enter into competition for their prospective favors, and recognize that a Europe evacuated by unwelcome alien military forces can and will be a Europe responsive to preferences for freedom over police regimes.

Ideological policies such as the Truman Doctrine seem to Mr. Lippmann to promise only a continuation of the trend toward a new war. Policies conceived in economic and political realities, and brought to proper focus, promise to end the international deadlock and open the way to settlements. In Secretary Marshall’s initiative of last June, Mr. Lippmann sees American policy moving toward affirmatives. In the stubborn efforts of champions of the Truman Doctrine to merge it into the Marshall Plan and give it dominance, he sees grave threat of diplomatic disaster.