The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington

REACTIONS to the Administration’s elaborately billed new foreign policy and military strategy have been more skeptical than acclaimatory. One point in the doctrine is that there will be no more limited wars unless we ourselves determine the limits. Critics have been quick to seize upon this as an indication that henceforth the only kind of war the United States will be prepared to fight will be of the all-out, atomic variety.

For months the Administration has been under pressure some of it generated by the President’s and Secretary Dulles’s campaign extravagances to come up with a successor to the TrumanAcheson-Kennan policy of containment of Communism. In a narrow interpretation containment was, of course, a negative doctrine. It implied that wherever the Communist organism pushed outyvard, we must he prepared to push hack.

One disadvantage of containment is that it leaves the Kremlin free to choose the point of conflict. There is persuasive evidence that Moscow has pursued a deliberate policy, not of inviting major war, hut of bleeding the free world in minor years with stooge regimes around the periphery of the Communist empire. Hence the clamor, at times almost irresistible, to strike back at the heart of the trouble in Moscow and Peiping, lienee also the desire for some dramatic alternative that will restore the “strategic initiative” to the United States.

At the base of the Administration’s attempt to redirect foreign policy are three assumptions: —

1.That foreign policy, meaning military strategy, must be tailored to fit the national budget. General George C. Marshall, when he was Secretary of Defense, argued for an “enduring posture” of defense — one that could he sustained over a long period without the wild fluctuations that have often characterized American military spending. The President and Secretaries Wilson and Dulles frankly acknowledge the budgetary limitation on strategy and have attempted to give practical meaning to Marshall’s prescription.

2. That the availability and versatility of atomic weapons actually make it possible to obtain more strength for less money. This assumption is closely allied with the first point. Atomic weapons, it is argued, can be adapted to any use. of conventional weapons. They should permit substantial sayings in manpower without loss of strength.

3. That the main concern of the Soviet Union today is with internal consolidation instead of externa! aggression. In other words, Russia wants a period of lessened tension even if she is unwilling to make big concessions to obtain it. This assumption is based on the indications that the struggle for succession in the Kremlin is far from ended and that the Red Army and Marshal Zhukov are gaining in power. This theory is widely accepted in Euro pe and has much to do with the more relaxed atmosphere there despite what the military men call the critical deficiencies in NATO.

The calculated risks

All this amounts to a calculated risk that a clear statement of policy will serve to deter aggressors. There is a lot to be said for the contention that the war in Korea came about in the first place because the Soviet Union miscalculated American intentions. But there are certain obvious hazards in the new strategy. One is that, followed to the extreme, it would make the United States a prisoner of a rigid formula. If another conflict arose such as that in Indochina, it might be very difficult for us to determine just how much of the aggression was of local origin and how much inspired by Moscow or Peiping. An atom bomb on the Kremlin would scarcely quell local grievances. And yet intervention might be a strategic necessity.

European powers — notably Britain, France, and even Russia herself— have found it desirable over many years to localize wars wherever possible. Even in Korea the Ended States adhered to the theory that limited war was preferable to global war. No one has said flatly that the Administration will not attempt to localize a new war, but the implication that it will not has caused some alarm.

A second hazard has to do with the nature of atomic weapons. As the Ended States has placed more reliance on the new weapons, the Soviet. Union has renewed its campaign to outlaw them. Obviously this is a proposition to which this country cannot agree, since any ban short of general disarmament would give Russia a great advantage in her hordes of manpower and conventional arms. Russia thus is able to whet fears among the NATO allies that American strategy is tied inescapably to a world-shattering atomic blitz.

More serious is the possibility that calculated risks on our part will invite similar risks bv the Soviet Enion. Since World War II, Russia has gambled that the United States would not use the atomic bomb, and so far the gamble has proved prudent. It is not inconceivable that the masters of the Kremlin, if they were bent on fomenting new trouble beyond Soviet borders, might decide to take the risk again. Then the Ended States would defaced with the choice of instituting a world war through instantaneous retaliation outside the immediate area of conflict or of backing down, thereby acknowledging the new policy to be a bluff.

Surpluses and price support

President Eisenhower’s agriculture recommendations represent the most courageous part of his legislative program. But the opposition of influential legislators, including the Republican chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Representative lifford Hope, makes it most unlikely that any flexible price-support system will be put into effect. In economic terms the dilemma can be stated thus: The farmer, alone of all producers, has no control over his product once the seed is sown. Because of this, some sort of governmental backstop is necessary to protect farm income. But high price supports, a relic of the extraordinary needs during wartime, tend to encourage overproduclion in present circumstances. The more farmers produce, the more market prices fall, and the more the government must purchase in order 10 support prices, The result is that the farmer often produces not for the market but for the government. President Eisenhower and Agriculture Secretary Benson have been seeking a way out of this vicious circle.

Many members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, have expressed concern over the mounting surpluses and concede privately that Benson is right in attempting to get away from rigid supports that serve as incentives for overproduction. But any departure from the 90 percent support level is political poison in an election year.

The President’s farm program

Three principal steps make up the President’s program. First, he would “insulate" from the market more than one third of the present $6 billion worth of surplus farm commodit ies — that is, write them off and dispose of them outside normal channels. Second, he would institute a flexible scale of price supports for wheat, corn, cotton, and peanuts at from 90 down to 75 per emit of parity, depending on supply. Third, he would apply the production payments feature of the Brannan Plan to domestically produced wool.

These recommendations were drawn from many sources, including the agricultural acts of 1948 and 1949 which Congress has never permitted to take full effect. A bipartisan fourteen-member National Agricultural Advisory Commission, headed by I )ean William Myers of Cornell Enivcrsity, consulted with Benson. Their recommendations were then reviewed and revised by Dean Myers and the President’s brother, Dr. Milton Eisenhower— both of whom, incidentally, were in the Department of Agriculture during Democratic administrations.

There has been remarkably little criticism of the plan to write off a considerable portion of the present surplus. This would be accomplished in several ways. The size of the carry-over of corn would be increased; the standard of what is considered a normal supply would be raised. Stocks of government-owned wheat, cotton, vegetable oils, and dairy products aggregating billion would be withdrawn from the market and regarded as an emergency reserve. They would be used for the school lunch program and aid to the needy, as well as for foreign relief. The President acknowledged that the government’s commodity holdings are “enormous”; they include more than $2 billion worth of wheat alone. There may be a rude awakening when Congress considers Eisenhower’s request for $1.75 billion in additional borrowing power for the Commodity credit Corporation, which conducts the price-support activities. This would bring the total to $8.5 billion. Despite the huge investment, however, then has been only minor sniping at the proposed write-off, principally because no feasible alternative is in view.

Similarly, apart from some partisan grumbling, there has been relatively little criticism of the production payments scheme for wool, which one newspaper aptly termed “the Brannan Plan in sheep’s clothing.” The United States imports roughly two thirds of its wool. Because of defense considerations, a domestic wool industry is desirable despite the higher cost of domestic production. Yet domestic wool has piled up in storage.

Under the President’s plan the price of wool would be allowed to seek it own market level. Surpluses would thus be cleared in the market. The government would make up in direct payments to domestic producers the difference between the average market price for the season and 90 per cent of parity. Funds for this purpose would be derived from import duties, which approximate 30 cents a pound on raw wool. Some question has been raised about the cost of this operation, but there is a general disposition to accept it as a reasonable means of avoiding surpluses.

Flexible supports

Most of the fire has been concentrated on the flexible support scale for wheat, corn, cotton, and peanuts. At the beginning of the planting season the Secretary of Agriculture would set the support figure for the year at from 90 to 75 per cent of parity in accordance with the crop supply on hand and the planting forecasts. The support figure could be adjusted upward, but not downward, as crop prospects became more definite.

Coupled with this program is a plan to institute modernized parity for all crops, beginning January 1, 1956. Parity is defined, roughly, as a fair equation between the prices the farmer receives and those he pays for the goods he must buy. Under the theory, if two bushels of wheal bought, say, a pair of overalls in 1952, they should do the same thing today.

Until recently the standard, or 100 per cent of parity, was the price relationship prevailing during the years 1910-1914. But the system has long been out of date. The most graphic example of the dislocation has been in the citrus industry, in which, despite prices ranging down as low as 35 per cent of parity on the old scale, producers have disposed of their crops profitably through new marketing methods and such innovations as frozen juices.

But the proposed changes brought heavy criticism from members of Congress eying the farm vote. Even Senator McCarthy jumped into the act with a demand for supports at 100 per cent of parity. At the root of the objections is the fear that any slackening in the 90 per cent supports would accentuate the price squeeze on farmers and set off a major agricultural depression.

More substantial criticism concerns the feeble provisions of the program for encouraging agricultural exports and the lack of any reliable means of ensuring that lands diverted from surplus crops such as wheat will not be planted to other surpluses. If the 16 million acres taken out of wheat because of acreage allotments and marketing quotas were planted, say, to soybeans, the problem would merely be shifted from one crop to another. Some farm organizations acknowledge that if farmers want price supports, they must be willing to accept more rigorous planting controls.

Food for strategic materials?

It may prove feasible to siphon off some surpluses in swaps for strategic materials and as payments for foreign bases. Yet it is hard to see how some sort of two-price system, or subsidized exports, can be avoided if any substantial amount of the American surplus is to be moved in foreign trade. The problem is, simply, that American domestic prices are far higher than world prices (and, with respect to wheat, that American exports are inferior in quality to those available from Canada). If it is any consolation, the regulating of agricultural production to conform with demand is a world problem which has not been satisfactorily solved in any major agricultural country. Although there still are great areas of human need, production goals are based upon an abnormal, wartime demand that in practical terms no longer exists. It is hard to adjust price support programs to increases in productivity — as exemplified by the potato hasco of a few years ago. When acreage restrictions were imposed, growers merely piled on the fertilizer and produced more than ever.

The Eisenhower program is at least a serious, considered proposal to repair some of the worst aspects of the topsy-turvy economics, If it is ignored, even in an election year, the taxpayer will continue to pay as the surpluses mount.

Mood of the the Capital

The progressive nature of many of President Eisenhower’s legislative recommendations is bringing praise from the moderates in both parties. Some right-wing extremists complain that this is another New Deal program, but the major criticism is that Eisenhower expects too much. His recommendations are really a three-year rather than one-year task.

The President’s more vigorous and more personalized leadership, beginning with the State of the Union message, has encountered some forces determined to frustrate it. The prime example was the battle in the Senate over the Bricker Amendment to restrict the treaty-making power. Few issues in the last decade have so drastically affected the division of authority between the Executive and Congress — a fight that goes all the way back to the Constitutional Convention. Congress is prone to believe that the only abuses of power come from the President.

The Bricker Amendment is merely the newest manifestation of a continual struggle that on other occasions has involved controversy over executive files. President Eisenhower has refused to submit to Congressional domination — a fact which points the direction of his leadership on other matters. In meeting the issue head-on he has charted the only course a successful President can take.