Washington

ATLANTIC

June 1949

on the World today

THE Atlantic Pact marked Dean Acheson’s debut. When he was appointed Secretary of State, some felt he was too legalistic to be a statesman. So far the objection has not been sustained. There are lawyers and lawyers. The lawyers who have proved failures as international statesmen are such men as Raymond Poincaré and Sir John Simon. But nobody could be further from Poincaré and Sir John Simon than Henry L. Stimson, yet he was a lawyer, and a good one. Dean Acheson numbers Stimson as well as Louis D. Brandeis among his heroes, and he has learned from both.

Acheson is now backed by an organization which channels into his office all the data relevant to any negotiation he is conducting. Secretary Marshall was apt to stay in the background whenever he felt unfamiliar with subject matter. This happened in the early negotiations of the Atlantic Pact. He allowed the Under Secretary, Robert Lovett, to handle the negotiation, though, from the standpoint of good organization, Lovett should have acted as chief of staff to Marshall.

Some of the Secretary’s responsibilities in the Marshall regime, moreover, were undertaken by the Army by sheer default — notably, of course, diplomacy over Germany. All this is being changed under Secretary Acheson. He is the Secretary of State in fact as well as in name, and by that token he is civilianizing the nation’s foreign policy.

The opportunity of making the cleanest break between military and civil power will come when the West German government has been established. In Washington, Acheson, Bevin, and Schuman composed the differences on the Occupation Statute which have hitherto divided the Allies. Within this framework the Germans may now go ahead with their constitution-making. After this has been done and a German government has been established, military government will give place to an Allied High Commission.

The language of the Atlantic Pact and of the Occupation Statute for West Germany — the embryonic peace treaty — is simple and explicit Both documents owe a great deal to Dean Acheson. His keen analytical mind reduced their provisions to essentials, and then he drew upon his superb draftsmanship to put these essentials on paper. He had little difficulty in getting the approval of his foreign colleagues.

Perhaps his yen for the simple owed something to his initial experience on the Hill as Under Secretary of State. He bore with him the Pact of Bogoté, a treaty which brought together verbose resolutions of collaboration in almost every kind of human activity.

Pushed for time and fresh to his new assignment, Acheson glanced through the document and thought ratification would be pro forma. He found himself uncomfortably mistaken. Every catch phrase, every cliché, was examined for hidden meanings, and the hearings stretched into days. Secretary Acheson is reputed to have determined from then on to eschew all mumbo jumbo in international agreements. At any rate, the Occupation Statute is a short and direct document.

Schuman for France

The Foreign Ministers’ achievement would have been smaller without the quiet persistence of Robert Schuman, the Popular Republican who runs the Quai d’Orsay. Schuman shone in the conferences in Washington. Acheson and Bevin thought that the Foreign Ministers ought to be satisfied with the signature of the Atlantic Pact. They felt that the differences on Germany were so many and so profound that they ought to be deferred for consideration.

But Schuman had other ideas. He felt that this was a rare opportunity to come to grips with the German problem — a problem that had not only eluded the military governors but had also deepened inter-Allied misunderstanding. As a preparatory move he had had an amiable talk in Paris with General Clay.

When Schuman arrived in Washington, he won acceptance for wider discussions, and then proposed an agreement to agree on Germany. This being accepted, he started the quest for a meeting of minds on the voting powers of the Allied High Commission which will succeed military government in the three western zones of Germany.

The Foreign Ministers were able to reach an agreement chiefly because of better understanding in the State Department of the French position on Germany: namely, that if a confederation of German states was unacceptable, then the Allies should insist on the maximum of federalism. American policy started to move toward such an understanding during the Marshall regime, but Marshall’s policy was not continuous, deferring most of the time to General Clay in Berlin.

Secretary Acheson soon confirmed the trend. The British then had to be persuaded to be more hospitable to French ideas on Germany. It had almost seemed to Washington that Germany was regarded in England simply as a country ripe for the kind of socialist experimentation that Britain has adopted. Britain’s Germany appeared to be a Social Democratic Germany, and the Social Democrats cannot operate nationalization of industry without a high degree of political centralization. However, in Washington the British moved in the direction of the federal structure that the French and the Americans want.

Arms and the Past

The Atlanlic Pact raises the problem of equipping a Continental army with modern weapons. Many people who are in favor of the Pact are very skeptical about the arms program. Yet the Pact is no good to the Western Europeans without the weapons.

At present Soviet Russia could overrun the Westerners with police action; at least this is the contention of the foreign military experts. If, however, forty divisions of a Continental army could be armed, then any aggression would have to be mounted; that is, it would have to be preceded by the mobilization of the Red Army. And this, being a long and expensive business, would give the North Americans the necessary time to come to Europe’s aid rather than to come to Europe’s liberation — a vast difference in terms of creating confidence in Western Europe. By the same token the Russians, say the foreign experts, would be deterred from armed attack.

Those who disagree with the experts feel that the arming of Western Europe should involve merely a transfer of arms to a new place for their employment, and should not cost the United States anything. Their argument goes further — that the program actually ought to save money for North America. But this presupposes a division of labor in providing the defense of the Atlantic Pact powers as a coalition.

It is an argument, however, that doesn’t hold Water in Congress. It runs into politics and the feeling that the United States in the final analysis can trust only the strength of its own right arm. In other words, every weapon which we send to Europe must be replaced in the United States.

Perhaps confidence in the Atlantic system to the extent of relying on division of labor will grow. It has started, at any rate, between Canada and the United States. Of course, it cannot be pressed too far. An attack intended to be a coup de grâce would certainly be launched against North America, and it would not do for North America to be left without necessary weapons simply because Western Europe had failed to provide them. However, division of labor could be both an economy and a buttress, if not practiced all along the line.

Regionalism in trade

Senator James Fulbright is troubled by the possibility that the Marshall Plan, instead of encouraging integration of Europe, might thwart it. The worry has been in the minds of many people on both sides of the ocean as they view the working out of the Marshall Plan.

There has been less emphasis on Continental integration than on national production, thus adding to the pessimism that there is no hope for Europe, no matter how much American money is poured in, in its present state of Balkanization. However, Senator Fullbright’s effort to restore perspective by proposing, as an amendment to the second year’s ECA authorization, an “incentive fund” for Continental projects in Europe went down to defeat by a vote of 59 to 23.

It may be that the opposing Senators were afraid of Continental discrimination against American goods, as they were when Canada wanted to include in the Atlantic Pact a pledge to integrate the economies of Europe. They want economic collaboration within Europe, but not too much of it; they fear the growth of an exclusive regionalism in trade.

Here two American aims are in conflict. On the political side the growth of a real Third Force between the Soviet Union and the United States is distinctly to the American interest.

While there are two Titans in the world, with much of the intervening space peppered with power vacuums, war is always possible. How, then, can economic discrimination be prevented? Surely the answer has been provided in the International Trade Organization that William L. Clayton spent months in establishing.

The Mood of the Capital

The mood of the Capital, in spite of the great history that has been written in Washington since these notes last appeared, has been one of frustration. The Senate is both captious and fractious. No fewer than sixteen days were spent on the filibuster on the cloture rule. There was a veiled filibuster on the authorization of the second ECA. After thirteen days of random talk, the Senate voted 70 to 7 for the measure. The House gave its affirmative in a couple of days.

The reason for the Senatorial slowdown is not difficult to fathom. A lack of authority on the part of the Democratic majority leader, Senator Scott Lucas, accounts for part of the difficulty Lucas, who is personally a fine man, has none of the arts of his predecessor, Vice-President Barkley, who had almost a miraculous gift for producing exactly the right anecdote for tiding over an awkward situation.

Furthermore, Lucas labors under a couple of handicaps which are peculiar to this Administration. TO all intents and purposes he has been reduced to the role of a minority leader as a result of the Southern split.

With the Southern Democrats in a hot-and-cold alliance with Northern Republicans,Senator Kenneth Wherry sometimes seems to be the majority leader. What is more, he is not above acting as such. When he does, nobody is more riled than is Senator Lucas.

The battle between the two men, for precedence, is not helpful to the smooth conduct of Senatorial business. Nor does it assist Senator Lucas in retaining the composure and equanimity toward his colleagues which are essential to a majority leader.

The Presidential hand

The man from Illinois is likewise under a strain imposed upon him by the President. Mr. Truman, since the election, has been laying down the law with a heavy hand. A majority leader must work with his chief in the White House, if that chief happens to be a member of his own party; but the role cannot be that of a slave, if discipline in the party is to be maintained and the majority leader’s prestige sustained.

In the old days a majority leader retained a good deal of independence. President Roosevelt started to erode it, and then had a rebellion on his hands when “Dear Alben" (Barkley) balked. Senator Lucas, on the other hand, is inclined to show too much meekness.

The main reason for slowdowns and the sense of frustration in the Senate, however, is the Presidential attitude. At the beginning of his term Mr. Truman, with his mandate complex, almost ruined bipartisanship when he insisted on his own interpretation of Democratic preponderance in the Congressional committees. The soreness he left in the GOP has never healed.

Moreover, he kept up the Democratic celebrations of his victory unduly, ending them only on Jackson Day, when the victors held one of the rowdiest parties in the Capital’s memory. It was only after this that he began seriously to think of the legislative program which he had mapped out when Congress convened.